
^ 




Class .i :c-y^ 
Book V-:^ V^^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT, 



With the Y. M. C. A. in France 



With the Y. M. C. A 
In France 

Or 

Souvenirs of a Secretary 

By 
HAROLD C. WARREN 

Pastor of The First Presbyterian Church, 
Walla Walla, Washington 



Introduction by 

EDWARD W. BOK 

Editor of " The Ladies' Home Journal^ 




New York Chicago 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 19 19, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 






O'U 29 /919 



New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago : 1 7 North Wabash Ave. 
London : 2 1 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 



©CI,A535521 



To the friends of the 

r. M. C. A. 

— those who went up and down 
the la7id raisi?ig funds and all 
who so generously gave ; 

To «' F" men everywhere, rep- 
resenting the ideals of the Red 
Triangle throughout the world 
— in particular those zvith whom 
I had the honour of being asso- 
ciated ill the work overseas 



Introduction 

I LIKE this readable little book because it 
goes farther than to show the work of the 
Y. M. C. A. in France or the life of a Secre- 
tary: it gives the reader, over and over again, 
by the use of anecdote, excellent glimpses of 
that really marvellous product of the Great 
War: — the American doughboy. To those of 
us who were given the privilege to see him in 
France, he was the most amazing part of the 
whole " show." His equal was in none of the 
other armies. He was always finding fault with 
something or somebody — as a good soldier 
should do and always does — but he was always 
cheerful about it: ever original: never without 
a smile next to the grouch, and the slightest 
joke ironed out the frown and brought the 
laugh. Whether he was going over on the 
transport, back of the lines, in the dugout, in 
the trench, or within an hour or two of the hop- 
over, he was always the same : full of fight but 

7 



8 INTEODUCTION 

always full of plain American humanness and 
good cheer that won for him the amazement of 
his enemy, the comradeship of the Tommy and 
of the poilu, the confidence of the stricken 
French peasant and the love of every little child 
that crossed his path. In fact, wherever there 
was a child there was also an American dough- 
boy. He was the pal of every little kiddie in 
France and the fact that neither understood each 
other's language mattered not: they spoke the 
universal language of human comradeship and 
love. 

Mr. Warren has done well in showing this 
wonderful doughboy, for the home-folks cannot 
know him too well. He has also shown, with 
proper restraint, how largely baseless was the 
criticism of the Y. M. C. A. as the American 
public is fast finding out, and he also proves, 
with telling eflFect, because it is done so un- 
consciously, that the life of a Y Secretary in 
France was not the job of safety that the unin- 
telligent was led to believe, 

Edward Bok. 

Philadelphia, Pa. 



Contents 

I. Soldier Souvenirs . . . ii 

II. Service Souvenirs ... 41 

III. Souvenirs Spiritual ... 99 

IV. Souvenirs Statistical . .129 



I 

Soldier Souvenirs 



SOLDIER SOUVENIRS 

IT was repeatedly asserted during the fight- 
ing in France that the French were bat- 
tling to save the life and honour of their 
own country; the British, to retrieve the in- 
tegrity of Belgium; and the Americans, — for 
souvenirs. The American soldier is the world's 
premier souvenir hunter. His prowess has been 
freely acknowledged. 

The Frenchmen could scarcely believe their 
eyes when some reckless Yank would brave 
shell-fire and bullets at the front in a dashing 
attempt to bring in a coveted trophy, which 
would " look good to the folks back home." 
They would smile indulgently when our boys 
stopped their Hun prisoners and went system- 
atically through their pockets for little memen- 
toes. The Americans had a great fondness for 
the famous German belt, whose buckle boasted 
the proud legend " Gott Mit Uns," and the 
deadly Luger automatic. They revelled in the 



14 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

possession of German camouflaged helmets, 
canteens, knives, watches — regardless of the 
extra weight they had to carry. In years they 
were obviously younger than their French com- 
rades in arms; and in spirit they were thor- 
oughly boys, looking upon the whole grim 
business as a huge, exhilarating game. 

Back in the rest areas and wherever these 
relic hunters met with less fortunate soldiers 
who had not reached the front, a tremendous 
traffic in souvenirs took place. Here one could 
find, as I did at St. Dizier, immense piles of 
spiked helmets, and iron crosses by the hundred. 
Here one would see a doughboy sauntering 
through a crowded cafe, quietly exhibiting a 
German watch in a gas-proof case, offering it to 
any one who would cross his palm with fifty 
francs. Belt buckles, helmets, watches, guns, 
German money, medals — coming in a constant 
stream back from the front and finally finding 
their way to the homes across the Atlantic. 

Probably one of the most winsome memories 
among the French in years to come will recall 
to mind the ever ready smiles and jests and the 
big-hearted comradeship of these strange Amer- 
ican guests. And in their language souvenir 



SOLDIEE SOUVENIES 16 

means memory. Let us hope that old men and 
women of France will be bringing out of 
memory's storeroom and proudly exhibiting to 
their children and grandchildren these often- 
fondled souvenirs of their American boy cru- 
saders. An eminent Frenchman has declared 
that they came to save the life of France, and 
they behaved as though the French were grant- 
ing them a privilege in allowing them to do so. 

It is no wonder that the French were soon 
appealing to the American's fondness for souve- 
nirs. It stuck out all over him. Consequently, 
he heard the word on every side, " Souvenir, 
Mister, souvenir? " as the street venders urged 
their wares upon him. When he entered a shop, 
the girl at the counter would display the article 
requested and remark discreetly, " Very nice for 
souvenir? " 

For these Americans were notoriously free 
with their money. They were the best paid 
army in the world. They were always willing 
to spend. A French officer, who spoke excellent 
— even slangy — English, told me with huge en- 
joyment a story of a Yankee spendthrift. A 
poilu, he said, went into a jewelry shop in a 
small town to buy a wrist-watch. The dealer 



16 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FKAKCE 

displayed his assortment of watches, all of one 
price. The soldier complained that they were 
trop cher. The dealer shrugged his shoulders. 
The soldier left the shop. Just then an English 
Tommy opened the door and entered. He had 
come on the same quest. He grumbled heartily 
at the price, which he declared exorbitant, but 
finally bought a watch. Meanwhile, an Ameri- 
can soldier had appeared and was looking on as 
the transaction was completed. While the Eng- 
lishman was still protesting and was gathering 
up his change, the American picked up a watch. 

" How much? '* he demanded. The price was 
named. He considered. " Well," he said, 
"that's pretty steep. But I'm game. Give me 
three!" 

These amiable soldiers recognized the virtue 
of sending home the bulk of their pay. But for 
the rest, they figured that money should be a 
means of light-hearted enjoyment. Many a 
time near the front a doughboy has handed 
me a whole fistful of money to be remitted to 
his home in the States. This was a service 
which the Y. M. C. A. ofifered the members of 
the American Expeditionary Forces without 
charge. Knowing that he could not have drawn 



SOLDIER SOUVENIRS 17 

nearly so much in pay, I have inquired as to its 
source ; and invariably the grinning explanation 
was : " Won it, rollin* the bones." 

I recall a typical instance; so typical in fact 
that its absurdity did not strike me at the time. 
It was during the drive on the eastern bank of 
the Meuse above Verdun. There was just one 
narrow, muddy, cratered road, which had to 
bear all the constant traffic of French and 
American truck trains going each way, camion- 
ettes, artillery, wagons, motorcycles, infantry, 
while engineers were working on the road. 
The congestion brought memories of traffic 
jams in New York near Forty-second Street 
and Fifth Avenue. The military police were 
desperate in their efforts to keep things moving. 

Suddenly there was a halt. Everything came 
to a standstill in great confusion. A big truck 
had slipped into a shell-hole and would have to 
be pulled out before traffic could be resumed. 
Overhead two enemy planes had sighted the 
mass of men and vehicles and had given their 
signals. And now, with everybody helpless 
while the shells were coming with a whizz and 
a bang, feeling for the road, there was a tense 
situation. But not tense for the rollicking 



18 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

American soldier. In the twinkling of an eye, 
the drivers of the truck train into which I had 
worked my little Ford were down from their 
seats and on the ground, snapping their fingers 
and yelling at the bones, as they lost themselves 
in their favourite game of crap-shooting. 

It was thus that fortunes were won and lost — 
small fortunes that sounded big when puzzled 
doughboys undertook to count them up in 
francs. The French money proved as much a 
mystery as the language. Many of them re- 
turned to America with the intricacies of the 
dingy, fragile paper notes and the elusive cen- 
times still unsolved. The complaints of three of 
these demobilized veterans against overcharg- 
ing on the part of the Y. M. C. A. reached the 
attention of Mr. Edward W. Bok, of the Curtis 
Publishing Company. As one of the stanchest 
champions of the Association, Mr. Bok was in- 
terested in the report, and invited these dis- 
satisfied young men to his office. He asked 
them to tell their story. 

" The * Y ' soaked us ; they overcharged us," 
the boys asserted. 

" On what? " they were asked. 

" Piedmont cigarettes that sell for fifteen 



SOLDIER SOUVEKIES 19 

cents here were sold to us at the Bar-le-Duc 
Y. M. C. A. canteen for sixty cents a pack- 
age." 

Now, it happened that Mr. Bok had recently- 
been to France, and had visited that very can- 
teen ; and he also knew the " Y " selling price 
for Piedmonts. "Are you sure," he inquired, 
" that you paid sixty cents in American 
money? " 

" No, not in American money; of course not," 
was the quick reply. " We paid in French 
money." 

" You mean you paid sixty centimes," he cor- 
rected. " Five centimes are equal to one cent 
in American money. And it is a simple problem 
in arithmetic to deduce that sixty centimes are 
equivalent to twelve cents in United States coin 
— three cents less than you pay for the same 
cigarettes here at home." 

And so in old Philadelphia, where there Is 
plenty of time for truths to sink in, these re- 
turning travellers apprehended for the first time 
the lowly position of the French copper 
" clacker." 

A young man who was at a loss with both 
the money and the language found himself in 



20 WITH THE T. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

difficulty one day in a shop in Bar-le-Duc. Hav- 
ing secured his purchase, he suspected that the 
girl who had waited upon him had not given him 
the right amount of change. His attempted ex- 
planation by means of gestures proving futile, 
he walked to the doorway in despair. He 
accosted another Yank who was loitering 
there. This soldier, when questioned, con- 
fessed a slight acquaintance with French — 
" enough to get by." He was invited to help 
his comrade out of his difficulty. Willing to 
oblige, and swaggering with the pride of his 
learning, he approached the mademoiselle. 

" Parlez-vous Francais?" He innocently 
asked the French girl whether she spoke 
French ! 

" Oui, monsieur," she replied with a smile. 

" Well, then, why the hell don't you give this 
fellow his change? " 

The boundless patience of the French and the 
inexhaustible good humour of our own boys 
were both called upon, whenever a soldier from 
the States asked to be directed to a locality 
whose French name he disguised with American 
pronunciation. 

I had not been two days at my first post in 



SOLDIER SOUVENIES 21 

France when a group of signal corps men 
walked into town from a village four kilometers 
distant. They asked me to send some writing 
paper and canteen supplies to their comrades, 
indicating that they were "just up the road a 
piece." I asked the name of the village. They 
attempted it. Each achieved a different result. 
They looked at each other and then at me in 
bewilderment. 

" Well, anyway, it's right up the road. You 
can't miss it, you know. And say! You'll see 
the name of the place on the sign-board when 
you get there." 

The same difficulty presented itself when, 
stopping my car one day in a town with which 
I was not familiar, I hailed some roadside sol- 
diers and inquired its name. 

" Don't know. Bud," one of them called back, 
" we've only been here two weeks.'* 

And yet these Americans endeared them- 
selves to the French. There are languages other 
than words ; universal languages. One is music. 
Another, ordinary human impulses. The evi- 
dent good nature of these foreign crusaders, 
their easy-going ways, and the souvenir habit 
were put to advantage by the poilus and the 



22 WITH THE Y. M. 0. A. IN FEANCE 

young men and boys of the streets, who did not 
hesitate to ask for American chocolate and 
American cigarettes, adding with an ingratiat- 
ing smile, " For souvenir! " 

They always got their souvenir. The Ameri- 
can boy is generous to a fault, — unaffectedly, 
whole-heartedly. I have seen him when 
wounded give his share of chocolates or ciga- 
rettes to a stricken poilu, or to a black-faced 
French colonial, or even to a wounded German 
prisoner, whom he considered more seriously 
injured than himself. But what is more remark- 
able, I have seen him when in the best of health 
and high spirits, share his last crumb with some 
one less fortunate. In a troop train, on which 
I was travelling, there were soldiers suffering 
from hunger because they had given away so 
much of their rations; and even then, they had 
to be sternly dealt with by their officers to pre- 
vent the distribution of what little remained 
among some gaunt and wretched Frenchmen at 
the stations on our route. 

This journey carried the men with whom I 
had entrained from their reserve positions to 
their places on the Alsatian front. Here came 
their first days in the danger zone, their first 



SOLDIEE SOUVENIRS 23 

acquaintance with the trenches. Their very 
voices and bearing revealed their rehef, now 
that they were at last going to show in actual 
fighting the results of their training and pent-up 
enthusiasm. 

The night of their first air raid, which hap- 
pened to be accompanied by a general bom- 
bardment all along that front, threw them into 
great exuberance. It really sounded as though 
somebody had started something in that quiet 
sector. I am sure that every one earnestly 
prayed that it might be so. At any rate, it 
aroused an interest and activity which could not 
have been surpassed a few weeks later, had they 
been entering upon a tremendous drive. At 
Division Headquarters the officers hastened 
pell-mell to their posts for news. It was com- 
monly reported that a certain colonel appeared 
in his pajamas, but wearing boots and spurs; 
and the general caustically inquired where he 
had left his belt and sabre. The men stood alert, 
wearing helmets and gas masks for the first 
time ; serious, but unafraid, as the bombs burst 
and the rockets flared. But when one plane 
swooped low over the housetops and began to 
machine-gun the streets, then pandemonium 



24 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

broke loose, as the boys recklessly opened fire 
with rifles and automatics. 

Shortly after this a big German shell whined 
its way to a village some distance behind the 
lines and tore through one of the barracks. It 
was the first of our casualties in any number. 
It revealed the stuff that was in the boys, never 
to fail them in the terrific days to come. The 
wounded bore their pain heroically, without a 
murmur, excepting one poor fellow who lived 
but a few minutes and kept calling for his 
mother. 

In a few weeks they were veterans. Shell-fire 
and death were part of their daily lives up there 
on the Meuse above Verdun. They appeared 
to look upon it all with a whimsical humour 
which assured one that down underneath they 
had settled once for all the serious things of life. 
They had committed themselves to the unwaver- 
ing fulfillment of their duty, come what might. 
When I saw a doughboy sitting on a log out 
there in the woods, calmly cleaning his auto- 
matic amid a continuous, increasing rain of 
shells, I felt a desire to send his picture home. 
The utter indifference to danger would, I knew, 
have brought pride to the hearts of all his coun- 



BOLDIER SOTTVENIES 25 

trymen, as it did to mine. When the firing 
became suddenly more intense, he glanced 
thoughtfully up towards the trees, where the 
" G. I. Cans " were crashing. He held up his 
automatic and addressed it: '' Mr. Gat, you are 
clean! Something tells me it is time to leave. 
Now come with me." And, slipping it into the 
holster, he strolled unconcernedly towards a 
safe-looking dugout. 

The same apparent nonchalance was exhib- 
ited by a friend of mine who was sitting one 
morning on the edge of a funk hole, in which he 
had spent the previous night. He was calling 
to another doughboy, appearing from a similar 
hole near by. The firing was particularly heavy, 
and the air seemed full of the explosions of in- 
visible, whirring, shrieking things. Yet this is 
what he was calling: " Say, Bill, how are you 
off for cooties? Guess I know now why these 
French people are always shrugging their shoul- 
ders. Guess maybe this explains all those pic- 
tures of Napoleon with one hand shoved inside 
his shirt." 

And within an hour there was an advance, 
and he was helping to clear the woods of Ger- 
mans, singing as he fought his way along: 



26 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FBANCE 

"They go wild over me; they go wild, simply 
wild, over me ! *' 

At one time in this region our line and the 
German line were so close together that our 
artillery did not dare send over the clearing bar- 
rage, which should precede a new " hop-over." 
There was a lull in the steady pounding of our 
guns. Upon inquiry we learned that our in- 
fantry were being allowed ten minutes in which 
to draw back a certain distance before the heavy 
firing should begin. 

Lieutenants Stewart and Connelly, in charge 
of the battalion's first-aid station in which I was 
serving, promptly gathered their equipment; 
and I selected a blanketful of chocolate, ciga- 
rettes and cakes. During those ten minutes, as 
the doughboys were scurrying back through the 
woods, we with a few others hurried up to an 
advanced dugout, only recently abandoned by 
the Germans. There we set up our combined 
first-aid station and "Y" canteen, — really for 
a while in No Man's Land. 

Then came the barrage. I had read of bar- 
rages in which no one could survive, if exposed 
above ground, but had believed it an exaggera- 
tion. The thunder of this rain of shells from our 



SOLDIER SOUVENIRS 27 

own guns, and the havoc they wrought as I 
peered from the doorway of our shelter, con- 
vinced me. It gave new colour to the exclama- 
tion of one of the prisoners our boys had re- 
cently brought in : " If you think the war is bad 
here, you ought to be across those hills where 
your own shells are falling! " 

After the barrage came the infantry; and 
immediately the wounded began to trickle down 
to our underground station for treatment. 

But they failed to make any substantial ad- 
vance and finally fell back to their former line 
of dugouts, of which ours was one. Up there in 
the woods there were no trenches ; the front line 
consisted of a series of dugouts. So it was that 
we found ourselves apparently helping to guard 
the front line of that sector, held by the Third 
Battalion of the One Hundred and Fifteenth 
Infantry ; our only ammunition, gauze and band- 
ages, scissors and " hypos," chocolates and 
smokes and biscuits. 

It was in this position that we were cut off 
from the rear by German firing. The stretcher 
bearers could not get through for our wounded. 
The carriers could not bring food and water. 
We got along on bread and Karo syrup. The 



28 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

entrances were sealed against gas, so the air 
was bad; the life was uncomfortable, we were 
hungry and dry and glum. 

As we were making one of our attacks on the 
bread and syrup, there was a shout from one of 
the boys, who came quickly to the table and 
produced before our greedy eyes an unopened 
can. Off in a dark corner he had come across a 
great find — a tin of creamery butter. Very 
comically he threw his handkerchief over his 
arm, bowed to the lieutenant, and asked, 
" How'll you have your eggs, sir? " 

This irrepressible young man, with his con- 
stant good humour and drollery, saved the 
situation. We never tired of starting him upon 
a narration of his life history, which could in- 
spire mirth in even the most dismal of us. In 
characteristic fashion, too, he would contend 
that, whatever others might say about the com- 
parative beauty of French girls and Americans, 
he had seen some mighty pretty mademoiselles. 
" The best of them all was down in Grandvillars, 
in Alsace," he declared. " She worked in a cafe 
there. Two sisters, there were; but this one 
was handsomer than the other. What did she 
look like? Well, sir, she was a blonde and in- 



SOLDIEK SOUVENIES 29 

dined to be stoutish, and just the least leetle bit 
cross-eyed/' 

All this was at the time when the false ru- 
mours of peace were circulated some days be- 
fore the armistice was actually signed. The 
dashing of their unfounded hopes was a great 
test of the morale of our men. Among the ar- 
tillery there was a desire to get into Germany 
and throw shells into their untouched cities. 
The infantry, however, at closer grips with the 
enemy, were not so keen to retaliate for the 
wrongs done to the cities and countryside of 
France. They wanted a victorious peace, it is 
true ; but they yearned for the end of the war. 
Up there where the air was alive with death, 
where misery was their constant companion, 
the rumour of an immediate surrender by the 
Germans was welcomed. They prayed — yes, I 
heard them actually pray — that it might be true. 
And that night we distinctly heard cheers and 
singing and the noise of locomotives and trains 
from the German side. In our imagination, we 
could see the enemy rejoicing at the news that 
war was over, and some of them already starting 
for the rear. 

But there proved to be still some days of 



30 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

costly fighting before the Hun capitulated. The 
next morning, bright and early, those boys were 
called upon to go over the top again. Knowing 
that the end was near, those last advances and 
sacrifices of life, more than anything else in the 
campaign, were a test of the loyalty and courage 
of the American doughboys. 

And how did they take it? I was there and 
saw them as they left their shelters and started 
forward through the woods. Shaken in morale? 
Not a bit! Masters of themselves and, they 
proved, of the enemy. The same old courage, 
the same old dash, as they set forth amid the 
racket of raining death and were lost from view 
among the trees. They continued the advance. 

The French on our right had failed to 
straighten the line, so our men were flanked by 
a raking fire from the German artillery. The 
enemy held a commanding hill over there on our 
right. I had been, just a few hours before, with 
another unit of our division, so situated that I 
could see the explosions of our own shells, 
which came screaming over our heads and burst 
among the German works on the hill. But the 
men down in the woods did not know that it 
was a cross-fire from these German positions 



SOLDIER SOUVENIRS 31 

which was cutting them down. They were piti- 
able in their belief that it was our own artillery 
falling short. There is supposed to be nothing 
worse for the morale than such a conviction. 
All of us who knew the real source of the deadly 
firing did all possible to contradict the report. 
Nevertheless it spread. But did it dampen the 
ardour of those young warriors? Not a bit did 
they slacken. Nor were they even bitter in their 
blame of their own gunners. Rather, they were 
concerned for them. Indeed, one of them I 
heard exclaim : " Say, it sure will be hell, the 
way those poor guys will feel, when they hear 
theyVe been killing their own men." 

These were the boys whose courage never 
broke. One of them came down the steps of our 
first-aid station, his right arm hanging limp. 
An examination showed that his arm had been 
cut from the shoulder by a piece of shrapnel al- 
most as neatly as it could have been done by a 
surgeon; and it seemed to be hanging simply 
by a shred of the deltoid muscle. The doctors 
bound him up as best they could. He should 
have been rushed to the rear, but the terrific 
firing had made it impossible for the stretcher 
bearers to get to the front. Through the long, 



32 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FBANCB 

dark hours he lay there on a hard board bench. 
We were not expecting him to survive the night. 
What was our astonishment when, the next 
morning, the stretcher bearers still failing to 
come, he calmly arose, climbed the steep steps 
of the dugout entrance, and picked his way 
through all the dangers and rough going of the 
woods, till he came to the dressing station, 
where an ambulance was loading. He climbed 
in and went on to the hospital. 

One cannot overstate the heroism of the men 
of the Sanitary Train. The fidelity of the 
medical men, stretcher bearers, ambulance 
drivers, to their duty, their rugged endurance 
of hardships, their tender concern for their 
patients, are memories that will always live with 
one who was privileged to work with them at 
the front. As the doughboys put it: " We used 
to call 'em pill-rollers, but now we sure have to 
take off our hats to those ambulance boys." 

In an extraordinary bombardment, which had 
driven us all under cover, one of these litter- 
bearers was seen running for our dugout. He 
had just helped to bring in a wounded man. He 
slid down the steps and, throwing his arms 
about the neck of a friend who sprang to catch 



SOLDIEE SOUVENIES 33 

him, started to sob as though his heart would 
break. In a jerky voice he got it out : The shell 
had landed very close ; it had killed and wounded 
a number of men, one of whom he had helped to 
carry in ; and it had buried alive two of his com- 
rades, who belonged at that same dressing sta- 
tion. The horror of what he had just witnessed 
was in his voice. Then, pulling himself together, 
despite the restraining hands, he raced out again 
into the hail of flying missiles, to return and help 
dig out the unfortunates. 

Leaving this station one morning, I was driv- 
ing my Y. M. C. A. Ford along a narrow, slip- 
pery road, right behind an ambulance loaded 
with wounded, two of them on stretchers, the 
rest sitting up. The road was under heavy shell- 
ing. We wasted no time. 

As both cars were hurrying along, I heard a 
sudden whizz, and a bang that seemed to rock 
the landscape. Before my eyes the rear of the 
ambulance was torn off by the explosion. Every 
one of the wounded men inside was struck again 
by fragments, and three were killed outright. 
The man sitting in front with the driver was hit. 
The driver himself happened to be leaning for- 
ward to change gears, and so escaped the piece 



34 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

of iron that buried itself in the back of the seat 
behind him. But he never slowed up for a mo- 
ment. On he drove vi^ith his wrecked car and 
ghastly load. One man had lost his head and 
one arm and shoulder; and the torso with spray- 
ing blood hung over the side, to the horror of 
every one we passed. 

We had covered some distance when there 
was a muffled report, and one of the ambulance 
tires blew out. The shrieking and bursting 
shells were a warning that flat tires should not 
hold any one back, if he considered his own life. 
But that driver had no thought for his own 
safety. He cared only for what he believed to 
be his duty. The car stopped, and out he 
jumped, and began to jack up the wheel. Some 
hurrying soldiers helped convince him that we 
were not in a healthy place for changing tires ; 
and soon he was again on his way, speeding his 
pitiful load to the nearest dressing station for 
relief. 

The best one could say of these faithful 
workers is that they were worthy of the 
wounded heroes whom they served. For surely 
those wounded Yanks were magnificent. Suf- 
fering untold agonies, which they kept behind 



SOLDIER SOUVENIRS 35 

their white, tight-pressed lips, they have thanked 
me most carefully for Hghting a cigarette, or 
courteously expressed their appreciation for 
some other slight service which I was proud to 
render. 

And everything was all right — always. When 
crowded conditions forced us to lay them on 
their stretchers outside in the mud, under the 
open sky, exposed to all the perils of the terri- 
fying missiles that flew through the darkness, 
they only smiled and understood. It was all in 
the game, they said. 

One poor fellow was carried in with his leg 
smashed and half of it hanging to one side of 
the stretcher, a wound in his neck, and a bullet- 
hole in his forehead. He talked rationally and 
distinctly and bravely. I offered him a cup of 
hot chocolate. He attempted to sit up. He 
seemed to reach for the drink; but, throwing 
out his arm and knocking the cup from my 
hand, he screamed : " Come on, boys ; weVe got 
to get that machine gun." And then he died. 

Further back in the hospitals I had found 
them with the same American grit, the same 
ever-ready American smiles. There was a 
general agreement between the Y. M. C. A, and 



36 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

the Red Cross that the latter was to have ex- 
clusive charge of the wounded men after they 
had reached the hospitals. We were permitted 
to visit them, however, after consulting Red 
Cross authorities, or in localities where the Red 
Cross had no representatives. Consequently, 
in Alsace, I often ran my car out to a beautiful 
little chateau, situated on a charming estate, 
which Madame had converted into a hospital. 
Here the patients were mostly French. Some 
of them were black-faced colonials. I had seen 
a great many of these poor dark-skinned crea- 
tures, as they manfully, silently bore their 
wounds. Never a word from their swollen lips, 
excepting an occasional " Merci, monsieur," as 
we sought to ease their pain. Here in the hos- 
pital, however, they were always frolicking and 
joking. One irrepressible humourist caused 
great merriment as he continually grimaced and 
protested because I spoke to his nurse in Eng- 
lish, which he could not understand. 

There were a few American wounded here. 
They were lonely. They longed to be sent to 
an American hospital. I never missed running 
in to see them, for I knew they counted on such 
visits. 



SOLDIER SOUVENIES 37 

One of them had lost a leg. I had not had 
time to sit down after shaking hands with him 
the first day we met, before he had thrown back 
the bed covers to show me what had happened 
to him. It was an honourable wound, and his 
eyes gleamed with pride. It led me to wonder 
how many of us at home, in whatever lines of 
service we may be engaged, have scars to which 
we could point as evidence of our devotion to 
some lofty cause. I was thinking of all the 
years in which he would be handicapped, but, of 
course, tried to say something cheering about 
his misfortune. 

" Oh, yes,'* he cut in, " Fm all right. Tough 
luck, you know; but it's in a doggone good 
cause ! " 

There were others in his condition at the 
French hospital at Hericourt, but farther ad- 
vanced in their convalescence. They were usu- 
ally to be found laughing and shouting in a rol- 
licking contest with some French blesse similarly 
crippled, as they sought to gain dexterity in the 
use of one crutch instead of two. 

In Paris I had seen them at a big base hos- 
pital. Taking advantage, as I often did, of the 
generosity of some friends in America, who had 



38 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

provided me with an extra fund to be used, 
when occasion arose, for Httle delicacies for our 
boys, I took out in the taxi a suitcase crammed 
full of milk chocolate. 

Their gratitude so thoroughly boyish, their 
courageous bearing, and their concern prin- 
cipally for the anxiety of those at home, were 
very touching. I remember now the lump that 
was in my throat and the effort I was compelled 
to make in order to match their cheerfulness, as 
I chatted by some of the bedsides. 

There was the lad with seven machine-gun 
wounds in his arm. " The only thing that 
saved me," he said with a laugh, " was — they 
ran out of ammunition before they reached my 
neck." Then he hurried on to tell me, as if he 
had been describing a football game, how he 
and his comrades had crept up on some enemy 
machine guns. The Germans were in a depres- 
sion, and the rolling ground gave our boys such 
an advantage that they had the Huns firing 
helplessly overhead. Seeing that ordinary 
means were failing, the enemy then sent over 
some aeroplanes, which swept low and raked 
our men with their machine guns. 

" Then what did you do? " I prompted. 



SOLDIEE SOUVENIKS 39 

" Oh, we just flopped over on our backs and 
let 'em have it with our rifles ! " 

Across the ward was that pathetic case of the 
fine young man who had had three vertebrae 
spHntered by a bullet. (They were all shrapnel 
and bullet wounds — on our front at least, the 
Huns had rarely dared to engage in bayonet 
fighting.) This boy was paralyzed, of course; 
but confident and smiling. He had partially 
regained control of his left arm; and with the 
deliberateness of great concentration and nerv- 
ous effort, he slowly raised it and gave me a 
stiff left-handed salute. It was a great joke! 
Everybody in the ward laughed. I managed to 
smile. But my heart was full for the poor fel- 
low, and I hastened back to my room to write a 
hopeful letter to his mother, back in Reading, 
Pennsylvania, concerning his truly remarkable 
improvement. 

So you have the young American crusader. 
Bubbling over with crazy jests, sometimes 
crude, yet considerate and easily touched. 
Brave and stubborn and grimly enduring hard- 
ship and racking pain and death; yet always 
with a flitting smile that speaks of duties well 
performed and a heart that is content. Memo- 



40 WITH THE Y. M. 0. A. IN FEAKCE 

ries — souvenirs — gay and sad, that I cannot and 
would not lose. 

When shall I forget the first of our boys 
whom I found dead on the field where he had 
fought? Dead! It could not be. The breeze 
was gently tossing his ghnting hair. His hon- 
est blue eyes were wide open, with little good- 
natured wrinkles at their corners. His faithful 
rifle still clutched in his hand, and with an ex- 
pression of unflinching valour and a seeming 
readiness to smile, he lay gazing into the west- 
ern sky, where the sun was slipping below the 
crests of the hills. And westward he sent his 
message to the dear ones at home, who waited 
for word of him : " I have fought the good fight. 
I have finished my course. I have kept the 
faith." 



II 

Service Souvenirs 



II 

SERVICE SOUVENIRS 

THE souvenirs which I have brought 
home from these days of strenuous 
work under fire have made the earlier 
memories seem dreams of the remote past. One 
almost forgot, in those all-absorbing hours at 
the front, that he had ever known any other 
life, or that his experiences in France had had a 
definite beginning or approach. 

It is a long look back to the time I sailed 
from New York, after speeding across the con- 
tinent from the Pacific Coast to enter the 
Y. M. C. A. overseas service. This was at the 
period when our coastwise shipping was threat- 
ened by the Hun raids, and the general anxiety 
over submarines had been increased for ocean 
travellers. 

I had been presented with a newfangled life- 
saving suit. I had no desire to wear it, but as I 
was visiting on Long Island just before the 

43 



44 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

date of sailing, we went down to the Sound to 
give it a trial. I pulled on the billowy suit and 
waded out. Either the suit was wrong, or my 
management was wrong. At any rate, my feet 
came to the surface and my head was lowered. 
I attempted to call the attention of the watchers 
on the shore to the fact that the suit was not be- 
having properly; but they thought I was calling 
for help. Some one shouted to the chauffeur to 
throw me a rope. Being a Swede, and taking it 
literally, he ran to his car, snatched a rope, has- 
tened back to the shore, and actually threw it to 
me, releasing altogether his hold. Had I needed 
it, this would have left me in a bad way. As it 
was, the absurdity of it all nearly choked me as 
I paddled towards land. 

On the ship was a man who possessed one of 
these life-saving devices. He was the butt of 
the boat: tall and lanky, sadly needing a hair- 
cut, his only semblance of uniform a pair of dis- 
reputable puttees into which he had tucked his 
baggy trousers. He had in some strange way 
been delegated as one of the countless " special 
investigators " who at that time were crowding 
over to Europe as though the war could not 
have been carried on without them. He had a 



SEEVICE SOUVENIES 45 

forbidding scowl and made few acquaintances. 
But he had, as I say, this outfit, upon which he 
depended to save his Hfe in case of a submarine 
attack. The contrivance was never left out of 
his reach. He even used it at night, he declared, 
as a sleeping bag. As he was exhibiting it one 
day to a fellow-passenger there came to view 
from a capacious pocket a huge, long-bladed 
jack-knife. Pressed for an explanation, he 
avowed that this was to be his protection against 
any unfortunates in the water who might appeal 
to him for safety. He had to stand for a great 
deal of sarcastic chaffing from the men in the 
smoking-room, some of whom contemplated 
throwing him overboard upon arriving at Bor- 
deaux. 

As always on shipboard, there were just 
enough unusual and interesting passengers to 
help the others through the monotony of the 
voyage. We had, too, our French classes, con- 
ferences of Y. M. C. A. and Red Cross workers, 
and entertainment furnished by the abundant 
talent on board. There was Dr. Walter Dam- 
rosch, in Y. M. C. A. uniform, on his way to 
France to organize an orchestra for the enter- 
tainment of the American Expeditionary Force. 



46 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCB 

There was the Princeton Quartette, enlisted in 
the " Y " service, whom I met again when they 
came to entertain our division in Alsace. We 
made frequent visits to the American soldiers 
who were living below in miserable quarters, 
and enjoyed meeting with a number of Belgians 
who were returning to carry on in their own 
land, after two years' fighting in Russia. 

As we were idling up the Gironde, nearing 
Bordeaux, one of these Belgians went over- 
board. I have never seen a prettier dive than 
was made by one of our naval ensigns, as he 
ran from the doorway of the promenade deck 
and cleared the railing. He rescued the Bel- 
gian; but evidently against the will of the 
drowning man, who shot himself soon after our 
landing. 

It was a remarkably short trip. La Lorraine 
was not encumbered with a convoy, and evi- 
dently speed was her main reliance in the matter 
of submarines. But the guns were ready always, 
and so were the gunners. Having slept on deck, 
because of the stuffiness of the staterooms with 
closed port-holes, and waking with a start as the 
nightmare of a torpedo shattered your peaceful 
slumber, you were reassured as you saw, be- 



SERVICE SOUVENIRS 47 

tween you and the rosy east, the dark, sturdy 
figure of the sailor ever alert by his gun. 

Then came the swift trip from Bordeaux to 
Paris, enlivened by flitting glimpses through the 
v^^indows of the tremendous harbour and rail- 
road achievements of Uncle Sam's boys ; and by 
the first attempts to impose the newly acquired 
French vocabularies upon the defenseless trav- 
ellers who found themselves locked in the com- 
partment with a lot of relentless linguists. 

We arrived in the capital at an anxious time 
for the Parisians. The Huns were once more 
within striking distance. Big Bertha was busy. 
Over a milhon and a half of the residents had 
moved their homes out into the country. 

Yet the French were serene and sure of them- 
selves. The temporary loss of Paris, they de- 
clared, would mean not defeat, but only a de- 
ferred victory. They were strong in their deter- 
mination to defend the city at all costs. The 
machine-gun positions prepared in the side- 
walks were constant reminders of what might 
be expected. So were the great number of auto- 
mobiles standing in readiness day after day 
down near Versailles. The affection of the peo- 
ple of Paris for their beloved city was mani- 



48 WITH THE Y. M. 0. A. IN FEANCE 

fested in the care with which they protected 
their buildings and monuments against destruc- 
tion by air raids. 

There were five of these midnight attacks 
during my six nights in Paris. When the alerte 
was sounded, the French made a rush for the 
abris; the Americans for the middle of the 
streets. They were a noisy, good-natured 
crowd. One might have thought that Hallow- 
e'en had come on the Fourth of July. The 
shrapnel would soon disperse the clouds and the 
full moon revealed the defending captive bal- 
loons and aeroplanes, and, coming our way, the 
flying wedge of Taubes. It was a brilliant sight 
and thrilling, whenever the search-lights picked 
out one of the Gothas as a great phantom moth, 
dodging among the shells which burst like fire- 
flies around it, and coming straight overhead. 

Then the crashing of the bombs! Place de 
Vendome was struck one night. Afterward one 
of my friends found a taxicab lamp in the middle 
of his bedroom, hurled there by the explosion. 
Another evening, when a bomb had started a 
fire which invited us away from our hotel on 
the Rue de Rivoli, I started out with Havens, a 
vaudeville entertainer who had been a shipboard 



SERVICE SOUVENIRS 49 

acquaintance, and reached the scene almost as 
soon as the fire engines. Our uniforms served to 
let us slip by the police cordon and into the 
building. 

At the Paris Headquarters of the Y. M. C. A. 
we attended conferences addressed by Mr. E. C. 
Carter, Chief Secretary for France, and other 
officers of the Association. We were refreshed 
in our ideals of service and received many useful 
hints as to our future conduct and methods of 
work. Incidentally we gained a fuller apprecia- 
tion of the colossal undertaking which this over- 
seas work represented. 

Under the direction of the central office at 12 
Rue d'Aguesseau there were numerous distinct 
departments. The Post Exchange branch was 
engaged in transporting goods from the States 
to each hut and front-line position. Others 
looked after the warehouses, the purchasing, the 
motor transportation, the hut construction, the 
equipment, the hotels and cafes. 

The departments of athletics, education, en- 
tertainment, and religious work each had tre- 
mendous responsibilities along their own lines. 
They aimed to follow the American Army with 
the best features of the American school, home. 



50 WITH THE T. M. 0. A. IN FBANCE 

stage, and church. The Y. M. C. A. was carry- 
ing on the ordinary functions of the American 
Library Association, the country stores, the 
moving-picture concerns. It faced the serious 
problems of the American soldiers* furlough, 
which they could not spend at home; and at 
General Pershing's request, it created homelike 
leave centres at the most attractive resorts and 
watering places of France, 

Then, of course, there was the tremendous 
and highly appreciated work on our troop ships, 
and with the French Army, with the Italians, 
the Czecho-Slovaks, the Chinese labour bat- 
talions; and in Russia, Palestine, Mesopotamia, 
Gallipoli, Macedonia; and the splendid work 
among the prisoners of war, to which thousands 
of our soldiers owe their sanity, their very lives, 
to-day. 

Once arrived in Paris, the main concern of 
every " Y " man was his assignment. After at- 
tending conferences, having physical examina- 
tions and interviews, the destinations of all our 
party were announced. Every one, of course, 
hoped to be sent to the front. Some were 
physically unfit for the exactions of such a life. 
Moreover, the work in the large centres, with 



SERVICE SOUVENIRS Bl 

their administrative offices, their warehouses, 
their hotels, their larger canteens, demanded a 
greater proportion of workers. And too many 
at the front would have been a hindrance. 
Those attached to combat divisions were strictly 
limited in number, and General Pershing pro- 
vided that additions to the force working with 
even an under-supplied division could be made 
only upon written request from the division 
commander. 

The examining physician at first rejected me 
for front-line work, and sympathetically broke 
to me the news that I would probably be sent to 
a port of entry or rest area. In my disappoint- 
ment I happened to recall that he was a Prince- 
ton man. So I cut in on his remarks with the 
observation that I, too, had graduated from 
Princeton, and that it was there I had met with 
the accident on account of which he had formed 
his decision. I told him my ambition was to get 
to the front and I wanted his help. Thereupon, 
as though he had not already done so, he began 
again my physical examination, and, with a 
twinkle in his eye, pronounced me fit for any 
kind of work. 

Thu§ it was that \ was assigned to the. 



62 WITH THE Y. M. C. A, IN FEANCE 

Twenty-ninth Division, which had just arrived 
in France and had prospects of being rushed 
quickly into action. They were scheduled for a 
training area in Eastern France, taking in a 
number of scattered villages, with their head- 
quarters at Prauthoy. I hastened to meet them 
there. They arrived in the dead of night. Ly- 
ing awake on my cot in the deserted Y. M. C. A. 
hut, I could hear the steady tramp, tramp, tramp 
of the men who were to be billeted at Prauthoy, 
as they entered the town and were marched to 
their sleeping quarters. From the sounds which 
I could catch on the stillness of the night air, I 
knew that they were a weary lot, who would 
welcome a chance to rest. 

The next morning I became acquainted for the 
first time with some of these boys with whom I 
was to live. They hailed from New Jersey, 
Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Colum- 
bia. They called themselves the Blue and Gray 
Division. Recently arrived in France, they had 
not as yet any Y. M. C. A. secretaries attached. 
And, as there had been no American troops in 
that village for seven weeks, the "Y " hut had 
been nailed up and abandoned. Meanwhile, 
however, marauders of some sort had broken 



SEEVICE SOUVENIES 53 

in, and the furniture and equipment were badly 
disarranged, and accumulated trash cluttered 
the floors. Consequently, for both the newly 
arrived men and the inexperienced secretary, 
who had forced an entrance into the hut only a 
few hours before, the first impressions under 
such circumstances were decidedly a novelty. 

It was not difficult to become acquainted. 
The men of the Headquarters Troop, billeted in 
Prauthoy, and men from the near-by Evacuation 
Hospital Number Five were not backward 
about coming in and offering their help in clean- 
ing up the hut; and they fairly pounced upon 
the Victrola and piano and writing-paper. The 
Paris Y. M. C. A. Headquarters did not reach 
us with canteen supplies at once, because freight 
was delayed and they had not known long in 
advance the intended location of the division. 
Yet the men seemed satisfied with the advan- 
tages offered by the hut; and French classes 
were promptly organized, and Bible classes; and 
vaudeville shows, boxing and basket-ball were 
soon under way. Sergeant " Spike " Webb, the 
Divisional Boxing Instructor, was very friendly 
in his cooperation. We did our best with the 
few supplies we found in the storehouse near by 



64 WITH THE Y. M. 0. A. IN PEAKCE 

until our shipments began to arrive. One of 
these early days of our experience, J. D. Phelps, 
of San Diego, and I, by means of a wheel- 
barrow, a dilapidated stove, and a stray case of 
cocoa, were able to refresh the drivers of a huge 
truck train as they passed the crossroads just 
out of town. They had been constantly on the 
road for three days and were most appreciative. 
Had they been Frenchmen, we would have been 
soundly kissed on both cheeks. 

During the time we spent in the training area 
and on the Alsatian front, we of the Y. M. C. A. 
force attached to the division had ample oppor- 
tunity to become acquainted with the French 
people, at the same time that we came to know 
our own soldiers. In our first location we slept 
in the little bedrooms of the capacious " Y ** 
hut, washed in a soldiers' bath-house, and had 
our meals together in a French home of the vil- 
lage. The French civilians were cordial in their 
attitude towards the Americans. They were 
frank in their acknowledgment that the en- 
trance of the United States into the war had 
saved France from defeat — far more willing to 
confess this than, I fear, we Americans would 
have been, had the circumstances been reversed. 



SEEYICE SOUVENIES 55 

Charley Lhomme, a French lad of the village, 
was engaged to help in the canteen work. Prob- 
ably the proudest moment of his life was when 
we had him sing the " Marseillaise " at our 
celebration of Bastille Day. Major Hill, the 
Judge Advocate of the Division, made an excel- 
lent address on that occasion, dealing with the 
history and spirit of that section of France. 

In the home where we had our Y. M. C. A. 
mess, there was sorrow over the recent report 
of the death of a son in battle. Yet how they 
exerted themselves in that household to enter- 
tain their American guests and conceal their 
own depression ! One day there was the sound 
of weeping as we entered for luncheon, and 
the little sister's reddened eyes betrayed her. 
But the next minute, seeking to amuse us, she 
was out under the window playing her fife and 
singing, "Heel! Heel! The Gang's All Hair! ** 

The news of the crossing of the Marne by the 
Germans had so affected the family that they 
were all in tears again as we entered the next 
evening; but once more the little girl saved the 
situation, as she scampered into the room drag- 
ging a captive mouse by a string attached to its 
tail. 



66 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

It recalled the symbolism of the Paris shop- 
windows with their warning signs, " Deuil en 
24 Hrs," And these windows had been plas- 
tered with strips of paper to protect them 
against the vibrations caused by bomb concus- 
sions ; yet brightened even by this necessity, for 
the paper was pasted on in symmetrical and 
beautiful designs. 

A wonderful spirit they had in all their adver- 
sities. I remember mentioning in my conversa- 
tion with a French officer my disappointment 
at having received no mail from the United 
States since my arrival in France. He was most 
polite in his sympathy. Only by accident did I 
discover that he himself had heard nothing from 
his family since 1914, when they had fallen into 
the hands of the Huns. 

These unfortunate captives were always con- 
sidered in the plans of the French officers. They 
were asked repeatedly why they refrained from 
making targets of some German factories which 
were visible from the heights of Verdun. Their 
reply was always : " No, our women are there. 
We would rather let the boche have the shells 
made there to kill us, than to destroy them with 
the certainty of killing our own women/' 



SBEVICE SOUVENIES 57 

And well might they be considerate of the 
heroic women of France. Their faithful work 
and their magnificent patriotism were an in- 
spiration both to the French soldiers and to 
their Allies. When a French woman in mourn- 
ing was challenged on one of the roads beyond 
Verdun from which all civilians were barred, 
the two soldiers who stopped her protested that 
she should not proceed on her dangerous way. 
She explained that, having lost already five sons 
in the war, she had come now to weep over the 
grave of the sixth. Instinctively the soldiers 
came to attention. Then raising her head as 
they allowed her to pass, she added : "" Vive la 
Prance, t aniens! " 

After only two weeks in the training area, we 
were transferred to the Alsatian front, east of 
the interesting city of Belfort. I entrained at 
midnight. Our rail head was at Vaux, and L 
made the run there from Prauthoy perched on 
some roll-ups in the rear of a Ford camionette. 
So thoroughly did I trust the driving of good 
old Conklin, one of my best friends in the " Y ** 
work, that as we sped in the dark along unfa- 
miliar roads I fell sound asleep on my uncertain 
bed. We had started for a train supposed to 



68 WITH THE Y. M. 0. A. IN FEANCE 

leave at two in the morning. We soon learned 
that it was really scheduled for four-fifteen. It 
pulled out at six-thirty. I entrained with the 
114th Infantry — part of them, that is, for many 
missed the train. Having started too late, and 
hiking at too stiff a pace with their heavy packs, 
they fell from sheer exhaustion in the road, 
some within sight of the train. Officers were 
snatched off the cars and sent back to round 
them up in time for the next train. 

The city of Belfort, guarded by Bartholdi's 
majestic lion which stands out boldly from the 
solid rock up by the imposing chateau, had not 
fallen into the hands of the Germans. Yet one 
had only to go outside the city limits to find 
shallow trenches, barbed-wire barriers, and 
lookout nests ; and all along the way to Danne- 
marie, to the east, the camouflaged roads and 
ammunition dumps and batteries and the 
blasted bridges gave mute evidence that cruel 
warfare had been waged across that country- 
side, and that, a little farther on, the hostile 
lines still faced each other across No Man's 
Land. 

Here one did not dare trust the French peas- 
Sints. They spoke German as readily as French, 



SERVICE SOUVENIES 59 

Some had sons in the German army. The coun- 
try was known to be infested with spies. In 
some sections the inhabitants were openly hos- 
tile to our men, and there was considerable 
sniping. It caused scarcely a passing interest 
among the French soldiers, when a farmer with 
whom they had been fraternizing was placed 
under arrest. It developed that he had been 
sedulously mowing his field day after day, and 
over and over, in such a way as to outline an 
arrow which, to enemy aviators, indicated the 
positions of neighbouring French works. So 
ardently did he give away this information that 
one day he overplayed his part, and the Ger- 
mans shelled the intended location of a battery 
before the guns had arrived at the spot. 

Generally, however, it was a quiet sector. 
Only occasionally were things livened up a bit, 
as after a prank which a few boys of our Thirty- 
second Division played. Putting their most 
vigorous sentiments regarding the Kaiser on 
a sign-board, they stole across and planted It 
behind the German trenches. They had suc- 
ceeded in regaining their own lines and were 
diving into a dugout, when a chance shot from 
a trench mortar fell into the entrance and se- 



60 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

verely wounded every one of them. One was a 
sergeant who had expected to leave the next 
day for America. 

Here for a while I was still attached to one 
unit of the division; and whenever it moved, I 
had to find the best place available in which to 
set up my cot and open a canteen. Usually I 
found a vacant room in one of the abandoned 
houses used as billets. Once, in the barracks 
at Valdieu, conditions were so crowded that I 
was reduced to sleeping in the room which was 
used as a prophylactic station. Beneath the bar- 
racks was a spacious mess-hall, where the boys 
were entertained one evening by Miss Roches- 
ter, of Seattle, and Mr. Wiederhold, of New 
York. As there were no available lights, we 
brought in a motorcycle and used its headlight 
for a spotlight. And, of course, during a senti- 
mental duet one of the soldiers turned it ofiE. 
Afterward, late at night, I held the piano and 
our hard-working driver, " Slim " Weaver, 
drove the truck, on the bumpy road back to 
Belfort. 

By this time, as a result of their constant asso- 
ciation with its secretaries, who were drawn 
from all walks of life — lawyers, insurance men, 



SERVICE SOUVENIES 61 

ministers, journalists, farmers, business men — 
and who, whatever their shortcomings, were 
eager to serve — the men and officers had be- 
come the loyal friends of the Y. M. C. A. 

Occasionally one would meet with cranks or 
disagreeable men in the army, as well as back 
home. One hot afternoon, I had gone to a little 
Alsatian town to sell canteen goods from my 
car to a part of a machine-gun outfit which had 
been left there, while the rest had gone to the 
front. At the major's request, our secretary at- 
tached to that unit had accompanied those who 
were stationed up in the line. I was attempting 
to meet the needs of those left behind tem- 
porarily. Beneath a broiling sun, I was handing 
out supplies to men who waited patiently in a 
long queue, which stretched away down the 
road. Some of them had been standing in line 
for over two hours. In order to make the 
amount of things I carried on my Ford satisfy 
as many of them as possible, I was limiting the 
number of packages of cigarettes, biscuits, and 
chocolate bars any one man could purchase. 
Everything was going well, until a captain came 
along and stepped in at the head of the line of 
wdting men and demanded that I fill his order 



62 WITH THE T. M. 0. A. IN FEANCB 

at once. I handed him the same assortment 
that I had been giving to each of the others. He 
protested that he wanted to buy more than that. 
Indeed, the amount he asked for would have 
lasted him several weeks, and would have ex- 
hausted my store. I explained that I could not 
so disappoint these boys who had been standing 
in line for over two hours. He insisted that, as 
he was a captain, he was entitled to all he 
wanted. I replied that private soldiers and of- 
ficers had to share alike with the Y. M. C. A. in 
such circumstances. This angered him, and 
after blaming the " Y " for removing their per- 
manent secretary — which had in reality been 
done by his own major — he declared, with a 
great deal of profanity, that he intended to give 
the American people his opinion of the Y. M. 
C. A. upon his return to the States. As soon as 
he had left, the soldiers declared in no uncertain 
terms that such selfishness was characteristic of 
this captain, who constantly bullied them; 
and they thanked me for refusing to yield to 
him. 

Our secretaries sought consistently to be 
courteous, but sometimes this was made difficult 
^y the conduct of a.n unpleasant c\istonier. Such 



SEBVICE SOUVEKIES 63 

occasions were rare, however. In one excep- 
tional case which I witnessed a soldier had asked 
for something which was not carried in stock, 
and then had attempted by deception to secure 
more than his share of a depleted supply, pre- 
venting some of his comrades from having what 
was due them. When this was. reasonably 
pointed out to him, he lost his temper and be- 
came so abusive that finally he was ordered 
from the room. All the other soldiers in 
the crowded canteen made it plain that they 
sided with the " Y " man, and they urged the 
offender none too gently out the door. 

The post exchange work was taken over by 
the Association at the request of General Per- 
shing — equivalent to a command, since the or- 
ganization is a recognized part of the American 
Expeditionary Forces. It was carried on de- 
spite unforeseen handicaps in inadequate ship- 
ping allowances, and many discouraging condi- 
tions. But, as General Pershing put it in a con- 
versation with Mr. Carter, the Chief Secretary 
in France, at a time when the supplies had been 
scanty for these reasons : " The Y. M. C. A. is 
not in this to avoid criticism, is it? But to ren- 
der as much service as possible to the men under 



64 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANOE 

the limitations under which we are all working 
in this war." 

There were attacks on the Association which 
we recognized as arising from an invidious, sin- 
ister propaganda. Others were due to misinfor- 
mation on the part of the critics. Still others 
sprang from personal grudges, as in the case of 
the captain I have just mentioned. 

But there were criticisms which were both 
deserved and well intended; and these were al- 
ways welcomed. They were the sort of kindly 
knocks which were really boosts. A Y. M. C. A. 
secretary has given credit for one such helpful 
jolt to a well-intentioned four-legged friend of 
the Red Triangle. On a very dark night, up in 
the woods, the secretary was trying to locate 
his dugout. The frequent bursting of high ex- 
plosives on all sides probably confused him 
somewhat, as he groped around. He was walk- 
ing with his arms extended, reaching for the 
dugout entrance, when he came suddenly into 
contact with a warm, hair-covered obstruction 
which he quickly guessed to be the starboard 
quarter of an army mule. He was left in no 
doubt, for the mule asserted himself at once. 
After a somersault or two, the secretary sat up 



SEEVICE SOUVENIES 65 

and found himself in the flickering candle glow 
of the very dugout he had been seeking. The 
mule had sent him flying through the doorway. 

Just then a shell exploded with deafening 
racket outside. The next morning the sec- 
retary found unmistakable signs that the mule 
had died a martyr to the good impulse which 
had saved the Hfe of a " Y " worker. It was 
certainly a helpful knock for the Red Tri- 
angle. 

There was occasional dissatisfaction because 
the canteen supplies were low or at times en- 
tirely exhausted. But the men of our division 
were not unreasonable, when it was explained 
that this was due in the first place to the insuffi- 
cient shipping room accorded the " Y"; in the 
second place to the condition of the French rail- 
roads, where often car-load consignments were 
sent astray and at one time an embargo on our 
goods was imposed by the French; and in the 
third place to our own scarcity of transportation 
— just four Ford camionettes with which to 
spread the supplies among thirty thousand men 
who were separated over quite an area. We 
had also a decrepit truck, but this was only occa- 
sionally in working order. Many trucks and 



66 WITH THE Y. M. 0. A. IN FEANCE 

automobiles originally secured for the Y. M, 
C. A. had been commandeered by the armies. 

We were likewise limited in men. We had 
been told by Paris Headquarters that efficiency 
demanded between one hundred and a hundred 
and fifty secretaries to an army division. The 
soldiers were arriving in France so rapidly, how- 
ever, and it was proving so difficult to obtain 
suitable secretaries, that this was quite impos- 
sible. We soon were notified that we could not 
expect more than seventy-five men to a division. 
As a matter of fact, our force never reached 
above forty, and most of the time was some- 
where between twelve and thirty. We were 
fortunate in having with us an exceptional 
worker in Mrs. Rebecca Ely, of New York — 
" Mother Ely," the soldiers called her. Her en- 
deavours to share our Hfe as far as possible, her 
unfailing eagerness to bring cheer and a home 
spirit into the relations of the Y. M. C. A. force, 
will live in the memories of us all. 

One important factor in our success was the 
remarkable harmony that prevailed. Our work- 
ers were men of varied ages and trainings and 
temperaments, yet all had retained the spirit of 
youth, and all were united by a bond of loyalty 



SEEVICE SOUVENIES 67 

to the Divisional Secretary, Mr. Walter D. 
Howell. His admirable executive ability, his 
devotion to his work, his fair and generous 
spirit, his Christian sincerity, were the secret of 
our confidence in many trying times. He had 
served previously with the Y. M. C. A. force of 
the First Division, and at that time had been 
sHghtly gassed and was cited for courage and 
efficiency under exacting conditions. 

Our soldiers were working with their French 
comrades in their first experiences on the quiet 
front in Alsace. In the village of Montreux- 
Vieux the company with whom I was staying 
at the time were quartered on the ground floor 
of a huge abandoned brewery. A company of 
French soldiers came to occupy the story above 
us. We struck up quite a friendship. They 
were soon learning to handle baseballs and bas- 
ket-balls and attending our moving-picture 
shows and entertainments. 

The French major at once entered into an 
argument with our Captain Lane. The French 
are most solicitous for the use of all available 
composts. Their regard for their manure piles 
is second only to their worshipful anxiety for 
their splendid highways. In the country dis- 



68 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCB 

tricts one could pretty well gauge the wealth 
and social standing of a peasant by the size of 
the heap of manure in his yard; and it was just 
as likely to be in the front yard as in the rear. 
This French officer sighted our picket line of 
fine horses ; and he immediately claimed : " The 
manure is mine ! " 

" No," said Captain Lane, " for, you see, we 
own the horses, we fetch the water, we supply 
the oats and hay. It is American manure." 

As evidence of their approval of this argu- 
ment on the part of their captain, our men 
standing within hearing nodded their heads and 
sagely muttered : " Oui, oui, manure." 

A family of the neighbourhood were espe- 
cially kind in their personal attention. On bake 
days the mother, to show her friendly feeling, 
would send me in a pie or some dainties, I was 
urged to call upon them, and did occasionally, 
to express my appreciation and to gain a better 
idea of their home life, and to improve my 
French. The little boy of the family would 
follow me around by the hour, evincing great 
interest in all that was going on. One day I 
turned to him with the question, "Marcel, 
parlez-vous Anglais?'^ 



SERVICE SOUVENIRS 69 

At once he replied, and with great enthusi- 
asm, " Oui, monsieur — ' Get the hell out of 
here ! ' " It was evidently supposed to be a fine 
example of polite English, and I could appreci- 
ate that if he had kept as close to the doughboys 
about there as he had to me, this was probably 
the sentence he had most frequently heard. 

A certain French officer serving as an in- 
structor for our men was, like so many of his 
fellows, lavish in the use of pungent creams and 
perfumes in his own toilet. One of our privates, 
passing near him and catching a whiff of the 
fragrance, turned and glared. Then he ex- 
claimed, " Say, the way that Frog smells, I don't 
know whether to hit him or kiss him ! " 

One of the French officers with a keen sense 
of the ridiculous was telling some of our own 
officers how extremely quiet it was always in 
their positions on the Alsatian front. He de- 
clared that the Germans never fired unless pro- 
voked. Presently he took a tin wash basin and 
went to a near-by trough for water. His back 
was turned towards the German trenches. As 
he leaned over, three machine-gun bullets, pass- 
ing between his legs, zipped through the basin. 
He gave one astonished glance towards Ger- 



70 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

many, as he ran and dove to safety near his 
American friends. But as he stood up, he 
merely remarked: "Messieurs, this looks 
suspicious. Some one must be shooting at 
me. 

There was a very accommodating French 
lieutenant, who spoke excellent English, ap- 
pearing under the management of the American 
Y. M. C. A. in most instructive lectures to the 
American soldiers. The men were captivated 
by his personality and intensely interested in his 
views of the war and his predictions. One 
night, as my route carried me near a town where 
he was speaking, I stopped for him, to bring him 
in my car back to Belfort. He proved a pleas- 
ant companion ; and at one point a very amus- 
ing one. Running quietly along through the 
darkness of a sleeping town, we suddenly found 
ourselves almost upon a sentry, who had 
stepped into the road and called, " Halt ! " As 
he did so, he brought his automatic down from 
above his shoulder and levelled it at the car. 
This greatly excited the Frenchman. He 
leaned from the car and shouted, " For God's 
sake, man, don't shoot us down ! " The humour 
of the situation was almost too much for the 



SEEVICE SOUVENIES 71 

man on guard; and it so occupied my attention 
that we barely escaped running over him. 

By this time I had begun to drive a Ford 
camionette, fitted up in back with shelves as a 
travelling canteen. My route took me to all 
parts of the division. I was able to visit twice 
a week the smaller units and detachments, 
whose size did not warrant the presence of a 
permanent secretary. Our " Y " force was not 
large at any time. The drives through some of 
the most beautiful parts of Alsace, the shouted 
enthusiasm of the peasants as the car whirled 
by, the eager welcome of the men I visited, 
brought zest and happiness into the day's work. 
It was a continuous round of visits to old friends, 
who were always cordial in their greetings. 
Passing through one village, a boy would stop 
me and ask me to take his watch to Belfort for 
repairs. At another, I would be flagged with 
the news that they were about to attack a 
chicken dinner, and an invitation to join them. 

My favourite run was in a sweeping quadri- 
lateral, starting south from Belfort to Monte- 
belliard; then running northeast over the hills 
to Morvillars, the location of the French hos- 
pital in the beautiful chateau, and along the 



72 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

canal to Division Headquarters at Montreux- 
Ch^teau, to a field hospital in a splendid old 
hunting lodge at Chavannes-les Grandes, an- 
other unit at Balersdorf and Dannemarie; and 
then northwest, stopping at a number of points 
on the road to Fontaine and La Rivierre, and 
back to Belfort. Sometimes I followed the cool, 
swinging drive along the Rhine-et- Rhone Canal 
until it brought me near the village of Mon- 
treux-Vieux, where my old friends of the Head- 
quarters Troop were stationed. Here I often 
had time to stop and indulge in a swim with 
some of these boys who were making the most 
of this rare opportunity for sport. 

When I first took my seat behind the wheel 
of the Ford, I had had no experience. By what 
I had learned from observation, however, I 
managed to extricate the car from its position 
behind the others in the small courtyard which 
we used for parking. My drive that evening, 
as I started on the return route of my first trip, 
was one of the most difficult I ever had to make. 
The man who had brought the car from Paris 
to Belfort, where we had our Divisional Y. M. 
C. A. Headquarters at the time, had ruined its 
brakes. No lights were allowed of course, and 



SEEVICE SOUYEKIES 73 

it happened to be a cloudy night when many 
outfits were moving from place to place. It was 
especially ticklish when, having met and passed 
a number of marching men, crowding my ma- 
chine far over towards the right-hand gutter, 
and then swinging around the left of a truck 
train, I saw speeding through the darkness from 
the other direction a dispatch rider on a motor- 
cycle. It was a narrow, muddy road through 
some woods. With the disadvantage of useless 
brakes, it was a matter of inches as I dashed in 
between two of the trucks and then swung out 
again, giving the cyclist just time enough to 
brush by. One of the military poHce, riding 
with me, who had been a professional auto- 
mobile racer, chuckled and declared it one of 
the narrowest escapes from accident he had 
ever seen. 

When we left Alsace for the active front 
above Verdun, the first stage of our trip ex- 
tended from Belfort to St. Dizier, and thence to 
Bar-le-Duc. Our Fords were loaded until they 
rode solidly on the differentials; yet we made 
good time amid scenery which was in itself 
enough to ward off fatigue, as we wound over 
the hills and through woods and picturesque 



74 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

villages. Leaving Belfort at quarter past nine 
in the morning, and passing through Lure, 
Luxeuil, St. Loupe, Bains-les-Bains, Darney, 
Contrexville, Neufch^teau, Gondrecourt, Ligny- 
en-Barrois, v^e reached St. Dizier at six-thirty 
that evening. 

One of the principal complaints of our men in 
France w^as the failure of the French drivers to 
observe traffic regulations and courtesy. One 
of our own " Y " force, Dr. L, A. Carley, of 
Caldwell, N. J., in charge of entertainments 
and religious work, was killed when riding in a 
motorcycle side-car, which collided in the dark 
with a recklessly driven French truck. 

One evening after driving down from near 
Verdun, I was entering the city of Bar-le-Duc. 
I became caught when almost at the edge of 
the city in a truck train; and as other trucks 
were thundering past in the opposite direction 
and the road was quite dark, I decided to idle 
along easily and safely at the pace set by the 
big American Packards. We came to a sharp 
curve around the abrupt ending of a hill, and 
between the two truck lines from the direction 
of the city came one of the swift French cars. 
It was a reckless bit of driving, as the French- 



SEEVIOE SOUVENIES 76 

man came shooting through the dark, well over 
towards the wrong side of the road. As we 
rounded the curve, he was headed straight for 
my Ford, which would have been pulverized if 
we had colUded. A quick spurt on my part, and 
he crashed headlong into the three-ton Amer- 
ican truck behind me. The next morning I 
was able to account for one of the French ma- 
chines that lay wrecked by the side of that road. 
Entering the same city on a cloudy night by 
the St. Dizier road, I found it impossible to see 
either the curbing or the sky-lines of the houses 
that lined the steep, winding street. I had just 
scraped the curbing with my right wheels and 
believed I was driving in the right direction; 
but it was as black as the interior of a tunnel, 
and a premonition of danger caused me to stop. 
My flash-light refused to work, so I struck a 
match. I found that my car was standing with 
its nose about two feet from the wall of a build- 
ing on the left-hand side of the road. I was 
climbing in, to back away, when there was a 
startled shout from behind me; and there was 
a big American truck, which also had lost its 
way and had stopped just short of my machine 
when the driver had seen the flare of the match. 



76 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEAKCE 

Shortly before this, a motorcyclist, shooting 
out from an alley and failing to hear the horn, 
ran into the front of my car. A crumpled mud- 
guard was all the Ford suffered, and the rider 
was fortunately only shaken up. But his ma- 
chine was smashed and was hurled against an- 
other motorcycle which was also put out of 
commission. For this little affair, having 
brought down two machines in a single en- 
counter, I bore for some time the proud title 
"Ace of the Y. M. C. A." 

With this general banging around and a small 
shrapnel hole in a front mud-guard, the sturdy 
little car had an individuality of its own. One 
of my avowed ambitions was to bring home that 
Ford camionette and mount it as a souvenir in 
a corner of my den. It seemed almost like 
leaving a comrade in the lurch when, leaving 
for Paris on account of illness, I learned that 
another " Y " worker, who had taken my car 
out, had left it lying on its side half-way 
down a steep hill at the outskirts of Bar-le- 
Duc. 

The first morning's drive up to the front 
above Verdun, where our boys were to go over 
the top at daybreak for the first time in the big 



SERVICE SOUVENIRS 77 

push, was one long to be remembered. With 
troops moving in and others withdrawing, with 
all sorts of trucks and automobiles and carts 
moving along the narrow, twisty way, with en- 
gineers frantically repairing big holes torn by 
shells during the night just passed, the progress 
was necessarily slow. We rolled along under 
the mouths of our heavier cannon, some dis- 
tance back from the line, and as their shells 
seemed barely to skim the tops of our cars, we 
received the blasts of powder and dirt in our 
faces. All around us hidden batteries were 
roaring, and smaller pieces sharply barking. 
To the right, machine gunners were rat-tat- 
tatting at an impudent enemy plane ; in the dis- 
tance were the observation balloons; and the 
anti-aircraft shells split the air with high ex- 
plosive. Ambulances came slowly back laden 
with wounded. Along the roadside were rolling 
kitchens, where soldiers were having their 
breakfasts. 

As our four Fords, each with its Red Triangle 
easily seen, bulging with supplies and with 
secretaries for duty at the front, crept along the 
road just at the break of day, there was cheer 
after cheer for th^ ** good old Y. M. C. A." and 



78 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

men ran along beside us calling, " That's the 
spirit ! Go to it, * Y ' men ! " 

Each of us felt that the reputation of the 
whole " Y ** force depended upon his own con- 
duct under fire. Through the trying days that 
followed there was evidenced clearly an esprit 
de corps which stood us all in good stead. One 
secretary, who should never have been admitted 
to the service, became faint-hearted before long 
and sought some pretext for being transferred 
to a safer section of France. But in the rear 
there were always hundreds of faithful workers 
eager to fill any vacant places at the front. The 
evening after his departure I proposed and 
sketched a medal for any possible future Y. M. 
C. A. slackers. It bore the inscriptions : 

''Extinguished Service Medal 

Legion of Horror 

Dugout Record Holder 

Leaving the Front on Account of Hang-nails " 

We unanimously voted to award it to any one 
else who took it into his head to leave. 

Arriving at the most advanced dressing sta- 
tion, — then located at Samogneux, but soon 
moved ahead as our line advanced, — we began 



SERYICE SOXJVEOTES 79 

at once to dispose of the goods to the wounded 
and to the exhausted men entering and leaving 
the front line. As the attack progressed, we 
kept advancing our positions. We were in sight 
of the famous Dead Man's Hill, where the Ger- 
mans had been firmly lodged, with marvellous 
underground passages and chambers. Some of 
our workers branched off through Death Val- 
ley; the others pressed straight up the road to 
Brabant and beyond. 

Here one found difficulties in the ordinary 
duties of a secretary. It was no easy matter to 
be in charge of a wayside canteen set up behind 
a counter of packing-boxes or tree-trunks or a 
broken wall, or to pass the goods directly from 
the car to the frantically crowding men who 
nearly swamped it; and at the same time to deal 
with the boys who sought to send money home. 
Here we met old friends under new conditions. 
The soldiers, having accepted our " Y " force as 
their friends, did not hesitate to entrust their 
money, even when one of us did not happen to 
have his remittance blanks with him ; and many 
of them did not want to bother with receipts. 
I was deeply touched when an Italian private 
one day handed me his savings and his home 



80 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FRANCE 

address, saying, "You take him, Bo. I 
know you. Y. M. C. A. send him home to 
Italy." 

Here our division held the front for twenty- 
one days without relief. They were days of 
constant work for the men of the Red Triangle. 
We had barracks some distance to the rear; but 
we were now up at the front, sleeping wherever 
we happened to be at nightfall. Indeed, some 
of us slept more comfortably under fire than 
back in the barracks, where occasionally a rat 
would scamper across one in the night. The 
duties often called for working several consecu- 
tive days with only one or two meals each; and 
I have gone for a week at a time with wet feet 
and no chance to change; a month with the 
same suit of underclothes, night and day. 

During one night at Brabant, as I prepared 
for bed by rolling up in a blanket in the rear of 
my car, I counted twenty-four German shells 
that landed close by; and only three of them 
exploded. My count was confirmed the next 
morning by a lieutenant of a neighbouring anti- 
aircraft battery. A few feet from my machine 
a horse fell into a deep hole and had to be shot 
and buried where he had fallen. Some German 



SEEVICE SOUVENIES 81 

prisoners were under guard just across the road. 
Eddie Shriver, who had ridden with me that 
day, came in at midnight to sleep on the seat 
that let down from the side of the car. I was on 
the floor. Some horsemen brushed near us, and 
one horse shied and bumped into the Ford, 
knocking Eddie down on top of me. Thus we 
lay, until my right side had become sore with 
boring into the hard floor; then I nudged him, 
and we both flopped over. This kept up all 
night. Altogether the circumstances were not 
ideal for sleeping. The only real bed and 
mattress in that neighbourhood were plainly 
visible in the moonlight from* where I lay. 
They were hanging from what remained of the 
upper story of a home that was all but demol- 
ished. This was the only building in the vil- 
lage that had even a vestige of the second floor 
remaining. Most of the former dweUings were 
reduced completely to rubble heaps. 

Here we opened an advanced canteen for 
passing soldiers, who were eager to buy. All 
day long some of them would wait around until 
our " Y " cars, having gone back to the ware- 
house, thirty miles distant, returned with a 
iresh supply of canned fruit, cigarettes, cigars, 



82 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEAKCE 

cakes, and newspapers. They clamoured for 
papers all along the road. One of the best ap- 
preciated services of the Association was the 
rushing of American newspapers, printed in 
Paris, out to the front. 

We gave away canteen goods lavishly to the 
wounded and to the exhausted soldiers as they 
came from the firing-line; and we sought to 
favour, too, the hard-working men of the 
ambulance companies, who, in their turn, helped 
distribute to the wounded. We gave a great 
deal to different units of supporting artillery, 
which, having been working independently, had 
not been served regularly by any divisional 
Y. M. C. A. staff. By means of carrying parties, 
we succeeded in getting a good supply to those 
who were beyond our immediate reach. Thus 
we were able to keep the men of our division at 
the front abundantly supplied. When you find 
soldiers up there discriminating between dif- 
ferent brands of cigarettes and asking you, when 
one kind is offered as a free gift, for another 
which better suits their tastes — then you know 
that they are not suffering from lack of canteen 
supplies. 

One day we saw overhead the greatest num- 



SEEVICE SOUVENIES 83 

ber of aeroplanes I had ever seen flying to- 
gether. At the time we were mainly interested 
because of the novelty of the sight, as they 
seemed to darken the sky. Later we learned 
that they had been returning from an important 
mission. At a certain point the Germans had 
prepared for a counter-attack, which might have 
been successful, since we could not quickly con- 
centrate a sufficient force to meet it. These 
aeroplanes, therefore, had been hurriedly sum- 
moned. Rushing over to the massed Germans 
with a tremendous load of bombs, they dropped 
them and scattered the impending attack. It 
was an extraordinary sight, for usually in that 
region we saw only enemy planes hovering 
about and, by their signals, endangering the 
lives of the boys who formed in long queues at 
our canteens. Even when the shells began to 
come thick and fast, the soldiers refused to 
abandon their positions in line; and they were 
resentful when commanded by their officers to 
leave and seek cover. 

Sleeping in the car at such places after the 
day's work, though dangerous, was far more 
comfortable than the nights passed inside the 
stufiFy dugouts. The dressing station at the 



84 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANOB 

end of the ambulance route, not far from the 
front lines, had been by some error established 
between two groups of light artillery. Conse- 
quently it was under constant shelling by the 
enemy, which at times became very severe. 
Here one night I was staying with about forty 
ambulance men. The cave was the size of an 
ordinary room; the air was stifling, due to the 
gas-proof doors; and the men were lying all 
over each other in grotesque positions on the 
floor. The stentorian snoring within that un- 
derground shelter rivalled the fury of the ex- 
plosives outdoors. I fell asleep without diffi- 
culty, after a strenuous day. I was sitting on 
the edge of a wooden bunk, leaning upon my gas 
mask and overcoat which were doubled up in 
my lap. Beneath me on the floor was a boy 
who had his body under the bunk, and his head 
between my feet. In the middle of the night I 
was awakened by some one jerking my leg, and 
an angry voice demanding, " Who the hell's got 
his foot in my face? " 

I suppose I had dragged it there in an attempt 
to change position. At any rate, I had my foot 
in his face — hobnails and all; so I sheepishly 
replied, " Y. M. C A. man." 



SEEVICE SOUVENIES 85 

" Oh, 1 beg your pardon," he said. " That's 
all right ! " And rolled over, sound asleep. 

I had to leave here early in the morning, so 
when some one came in and called for four 
stretcher bearers, I accompanied them out the 
door, after carefully stepping over the prostrate 
forms of the sleepers. These four hurried out 
to bring in a man who had been wounded just 
seventy-five yards down the road. Meanwhile, 
I found my car in some bushes, where I had 
left it two days before. As I started to crank 
the engine, the stretcher bearers with their bur- 
den were returning. As they passed me, they 
were overtaken by a breathless runner, who 
begged them to hurry back, as a man had just 
been killed on the very spot where they had 
found this wounded man. The shrapnel and 
high explosives were bursting up in the trees, 
and fragments were rattling all around the car. 
I lost no time. Usually the starting was a diffi- 
cult matter and involved jacking up a rear 
wheel, because of the chilly nights and the stifif 
oil we were furnished by the French ; but the ex- 
citement of the situation gave me strength just 
then to spin the engine and get under way at 
once. 



86 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

Along that road one day as I was driving 
slowly on account of the traffic, a familiar voice 
called my name. Instantly there flashed before 
me memories of student days at Princeton. 
Then I saw an artillery lieutenant scrambling 
down an embankment and headed for my car. 
As he jumped for the running-board, I recog- 
nized Don Fitton, a classmate and clubmate of 
former days. His outfit was temporarily at- 
tached to our division during that drive. 
Thereafter I often stopped in to renew old 
times; and also to help stay my hunger at his 
officers* mess. 

Down in a little camouflaged ammunition 
dump tucked away in the woods of Alsace, I 
had in the same unexpected manner run across 
Tom Seister, another classmate. One day 
selling from my car to a crowd of boys whom 
I chanced to meet on the road, and feeling the 
efiFects of hunger from having skipped two 
meals in succession, I was pleased in more 
ways than one to have Lieutenant Harold 
Disbrow, another clubmate of Princeton days, 
happen along and invite me to eat with 
him. 

There were many Princeton men in our 



SERVICE SOUVENIRS 87 

division. Lieutenant Chapman, formerly a pro- 
fessor at the University, Lieutenant Ober, and 
Captains Don Simons and George Stewart, at 
Division Headquarters, I had known in under- 
graduate days. This was only representative 
of the entire American Expeditionary Force. 
Her alumni may well be proud of the splendid 
record of well over three thousand Princeton 
men in the service, and the one hundred and 
twenty-five heroic dead. Nineteen of those 
who have made the supreme sacrifice, and ten 
of her wounded, had figured prominently in the 
athletic history of Old Nassau. 

Up above Brabant, as I was making a trip 
back from the dressing station with six men — 
two of them wounded — in the rear of the car, 
the road was under steady fire. There was no 
time to think of gas masks, when a gas shell 
plopped on the road just ahead. My hands 
were busy with the wheel, on a ragged stretch 
of rough going; and there was just an instant 
in which to call to the others to hold their 
breath. Then we sped through the gas. I 
must have swallowed some of it, for although 
no serious harm was done to my lungs, I was 
ill with nausea the rest of that day, and during 



88 WITH THE Y. M. 0. A. IN PRANCE 

the next two days was confined to bed in the 
barracks. 

When next I approached that dressing sta- 
tion, drawing my car up at the side of the road, 
I heard the popping of machine guns, apparently 
nearer than usual. I was startled, thinking 
that the Huns must have advanced. Then as 
I stepped from the running-board of the car, a 
bullet glanced from one of the wires that were 
strung just overhead. Another clipped the 
branch of a tree where they were fastened, so 
that they came tumbling down about me. 
Looking up as I sensed the danger, there I saw 
a Hun plane circling around in leisurely fashion 
and cutting loose with its gun. 

I started for the dugout, to ask for help in un- 
loading my earful of supplies. Another man 
ran up, and we were going side by side, talking 
together, when a shell exploded just above us. 
The concussion carried my helmet off my head, 
but left me unharmed. Shrapnel struck my 
companion and ripped open his abdomen in an 
ugly wound. I have never learned whether he 
lived or died, after his ambulance trip to the 
rear. 

While I was working in the First Aid Station 



SEEYICE SOUVENIES 89 

of the Third Battalion of the One Hundred and 
Fifteenth Infantry, machine gunners and snipers 
were concealed not far away in the trees. I saw 
something of the way our boys cleaned out 
these machine-gun nests. Right in front of our 
aid station was one of the doughty little one- 
pounders which excelled in that work. With 
one of these, our men could register a direct hit 
and then dismantle the gun and, bearing ij: on 
their shoulders, glide off through the woods to 
a new position. While we were there, the 
sergeant in charge of the gun brought three 
enemy machine guns and their operators out of 
a tree with a single clever shot. 

It was my great delight to carry Y. M. C. A. 
supplies to these men at the front. It meant 
so much to them, and their appreciation was so 
unaffected. One day, during a terrific close 
range engagement, an American sergeant, 
running to the entrance of an enemy dugout, 
called in German : " How many of you are down 
there?" 

" Six," came the answer, as they prepared to 
*' kamerad." 

" Well," he cried, hurling a hand grenade, 
" divide this up between you." 



90 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

The next day trudging past the entrance of 
one of our own front-Hne dugouts, and seeing a 
boy peering from the door, I called : " How 
many of you are down there? '* And when he 
had answered : " Well, divide this up between 
you." And down went a shower of chocolate 
dainties — big, luscious chocolate creams with 
cocoanut coating. A little bit of home taste for 
soldiers who were soaked with rain and chilly 
and weary of the brutalities of war. 

"Say, Buddy," they laughed, after the 
scuffling and scrambling had subsided, " those 
things are sure better than hand grenades in a 
dugout ! " 

These men yearned for the cheer and satis- 
faction which the Y. M. C. A. sought to bring 
to them, as well as the wounded whom I had 
heard calling in Christ's name for cigarettes and 
chocolates. I wanted to have some part in 
helping to answer those prayers. 

Presently I, too, was to have brought forcibly 
to my thoughts my own dependence upon God, 
out there cut off from all life as I had known it 
before. During the past days, as I had seen 
so many others carried away by shell-fire, I 
had been too desperately busy to allow my mind 



SEEVICE SOUVENIES 91 

to dwell on what it might mean for me and the 
loved ones at home. But this day, caught with- 
out shelter in the midst of a terrific fire poured 
over by the enemy, I was suddenly laid flat on 
my back by the concussion of a high explosive. 
Men just a few paces ahead of me on that foot- 
path through the woods were cut to ribbons. 
For a moment as I picked myself up, my nerves 
seemed on the point of breaking. And then — I 
frankly admit it — I was afraid. I was afraid 
of being afraid, of yielding to terror. 

But presently, warm as the sun on a troubled 
sea, came the consciousness that some one at 
home was praying. A vision of light, wavy hair 
and blue, tender eyes ; and the feeling of panic 
had passed. Thenceforth I felt safe in God's 
keeping. Stumbling awkwardly under my load 
of " Y " supplies, I pitched forward and fell, 
just in time to escape a sniper's bullet which 
wanged into a tree above my head. That 
stubbing of my toe seemed like an answer to 
prayer. Then a shell tore up the narrow-gauge 
railroad track behind me, and fragments 
whistled near. But somehow the thought of 
some one at home safeguarding with her prayers 
steadied me through it all. 



92 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

That night, ordered away from the front and 
out of the zone of extreme danger, back in the 
barracks I found, as though an assurance of 
those prayers, a waiting letter in writing that 
I knew. And it brought me her petition, in the 
words of John Oxenham : 



Where'er thou he. 
On land or sea. 
Or in the air. 
This little prayer 
I pray for thee, — 
God keep thee ever. 
Day and night, — 
Face to the Hght, — 
Thine armour bright, — 
Thy 'scutcheon white, — 
That no despite 
Thine honour smite ! — 
With infinite 
Sweet oversight, 
God keep thee ever. 
Heart's delight !— 
And guard thee whole. 
Sweet body, soul, 
And spirit high ; 
That, live or die. 
Thou glorify 
His majesty; 
And ever be. 



SEEVICE SOUVENIES 93 

Within His sight, 
His true and upright, 
Sweet and stainless, 
Pure and sinless, 
Perfect Knight!" 



And in those words I could read the secret 
prayers of so many dear ones back home, whose 
hearts were with these very boys who had so 
gloriously borne themselves as young sir knights 
in this great crusade. How many of these 
dauntless young men whom I was privileged to 
know and to accompany in their days of testing 
could worthily bear the appellation of the gallant 
Bayard : " Le Chevalier sans Peur et sans Reproche,^* 

Soon came their relief, and the division re- 
tired from the front lines to the region of Bar- 
le-Duc for rest and replacements. Some of the 
ranks were terribly thinned ; and many a man 
looked in vain for his Buddy in those days. It 
is a solemn time, when the division comes back. 
One of those boys, Private Stewart M. Emery, 
has described their plodding march back " for 
roll call and repair " : 

" Slogging back from action in the night. 
Boys who Ve had their fingers in the fight ; 



94 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCB 

Winding in the moonlight down the shattered 

village street, 
Crunching off the kilos on their numb and 

leaden feet. 
Couldn't pass inspection as to dress, 
What they've been through any one can 

guess — 
' Searing gas and cruel wire and blazing, 

blasting shell, 
Frozen, foodless, flare-mad nights and days 

of raw, red hell. 
Shrapnel battered transport in the rear. 
Weary mule and weary muleteer ; 
Just another outfit that's been through the 

mill up there 
Rocking back for roll call and repair. 
Straggling in the column anyhow. 
Plodding blindly on to bunks and chow ; 
Tired faces breaking in the same unbeaten 

grin, 
Other faces missing that were there when 

they went in. 
Here and there platoons of scarce a score, 
Squads of one and two — but that is war. 
Made a little history when they called them 

in the pinch, 
Chucked the cost and made it, battling inch 

by aching inch ; 
Silently they pass beneath the stars. 
Carrying their honours and their scars. 
Growl and glare of gunfire growing fainter 

in the west, 
Old Division's going back to rest," 



SEEVICE SOUYENIES 95 

It was a great satisfaction to be able to help 
those who had been through so much that they 
could never forget, to lose themselves for a 
while in the wholesome fun afforded by Y. M. 
C. A. entertainers. When our activities man- 
ager was killed in a motorcycle accident, the 
arrangements for ten or twelve entertainments 
a day in different parts of the division fell to my 
lot. Through the courtesy of Mr. Phelps, 
regional activities director, we were allowed an 
unusual number of entertainers. There were 
problems of transportation to settle and meals 
for the performers, suitable locations to be 
found and prepared for the shows, pianos to be 
procured, officers' permission to be secured. 
French villagers would look on in mingled 
astonishment and concern for the fate of their 
houses, when a " Y " man would appear at the 
head of a detail of about twelve huskies and re- 
quest the loan of the family piano. While he 
was making his plea, the men usually fell to 
work and calmly removed the doors from their 
hinges, and began to carry the piano out to the 
waiting truck. Many a time we would slide 
into a treacherous mud-hole; and the men 
would work away with chains and spades and 



96 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IK FEANCE 

rails, while some genius in the rear of the truck 
kept pounding out " Carry Me Back to Old 
Virginny." 

And now after those twenty-one days when 
our boys had fought courageously and our " Y " 
men had worked incessantly, after we had 
counted up from our small force of secretaries 
one killed, one wounded, several slightly gassed, 
and others worn out and unable to continue 
work — by this time the officers and enlisted men 
could not say nor do enough for the Y. M. C. A. 
This was especially true of the medical men, 
stretcher bearers, and ambulance drivers, with 
whom some of the secretaries had been con- 
stantly associated in the work at the front. 
As the old " Y " car came through their town 
at the time of the armistice, streaming huge 
French and American flags, they jumped to 
their feet and cheered — as they had done that 
first day of our entrance into the big drive — 
for the "good old Y. M. C. A." Our Di- 
visional Commander, Major-General Charles G. 
Morton, sent our Divisional Secretary a cordial 
letter of gratitude and commendation for the ef- 
ficiency and courage and unselfishness of the 
Y. M. C. A. force attached to his division. 



SERVICE SOUVENIRS 97 

I know of many other such letters from of- 
ficers high in command concerning the work of 
divisional Y. M. C. A. units. Many con- 
scientious secretaries have brought home with 
them similar testimonials of the gratification of 
officers for their own personal efficiency and 
courage and their contribution to the morale of 
the soldiers, such as the letter his major sent to 
one of our secretaries. Dr. McCullough, of Pitts- 
burgh, formerly Moderator of the United Pres- 
byterian Church. If the Association should 
collect and publish a number of these letters 
from army officials, including General Per- 
shing's own expressions of appreciation, the vol- 
ume would form a very substantial monument 
of the effective aid the "Y" has been to the 
fighting men. 

Intestinal trouble developing, due, the doctors 
said, to the gas, I spent a week in Bar-le-Duc 
and three more in Paris, in bed. Invalided 
home on this account, I finally boarded the 
Megantic at Liverpool, after all the anxieties and 
standing-in-line entailed by reporting to the 
military authorities and the various consulates 
at Paris, Le Havre, Southampton, and Liver- 
pool. 



98 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

At the entrance to New York Harbour, we 
passed a transport laden with returning sol- 
diers. Across the water from these happy- 
Americans floated the glad words which had 
been shouted so often towards the end of hos- 
tilities by our French comrades, as we sped 
past them along the roads: "Finis la guerre! 
Finis la guerre! Vive TAmerique! '* 

When at last in a Hfting fog the Goddess of 
Liberty showed faintly through the gray, as an 
apparition of the spirit of our fair homeland, I 
heartily responded to the sentiment of a negro 
soldier who exclaimed : " Once I gets the other 
side o' that there statue, all the rest o* the 
world's a-goin' to be No Man's Land to me." 



Ill 

Souvenirs Spiritual 



Ill 

SOUVENIRS SPIRITUAL 

THE Y. M. C. A. through its lecturers 
and through personal work sought to 
instruct the soldiers in the French lan- 
guage, the peculiarities of the French and our 
other allies, local and general French history, 
and the underlying principles of the war; and 
so to play a large part in counteracting Ger- 
man propaganda among our men. It sought 
also to keep up the morale by its steadying in- 
fluence for clean living and high-mindedness. 
Certain correspondents and investigators have 
objected to this branch of the work for the 
moral and spiritual welfare of the soldiers. It 
is remarkable that they and General Pershing 
do not agree on this point. They have indi- 
cated that the American Army is very well be- 
haved, as armies go. This is true. It is also 
true that the officers and the men themselves, 

lOI 



102 WITH THE Y. M. 0. A. IN FRANCE 

with comparatively few exceptions, attribute 
this fact in large measure to the efforts of the 
Y. M. C. A. and similar organizations. And it 
is true that when French officers asked Pershing 
for the secret of the American morale, he ad- 
vised them to send for American Y. M. C. A. 
secretaries. It is true that while I was in Paris 
one of the chief medical officers of the army- 
came to Mr. Carter, Chief Secretary for France, 
and requested that an additional " Y " hut be 
erected in a certain block in one big port of 
entry for the sake of the effect it would have in 
combatting evil influences. 

The exploitation of the returning soldiers as 
sponsors for particular views and prejudices is 
a familiar pastime. It is an easy matter for 
those who are so disposed, to make a veiled at- 
tack upon the Christian standards advocated by 
the Y. M. C. A. and the churches of America, by 
hitting at them over the shoulders of the soldiers. 

We are told, as though it were a new dis- 
covery on the part of military men, that the 
true Christian must be unselfish, devoted not 
merely to his own salvation, but to the service 
of mankind and the betterment of the world. 
That is, however, something most of us recog- 



SOUVENIES SPIEITUAL 103 

nized before the war. So did the soldiers. The 
soldiers are too often looked upon as a peculiar 
species; instead of male American citizens from 
all walks of life and various degrees of educa- 
tion, who happen to be of military age and 
physical standards, selected impartially through- 
out all the country. If a poll were taken of the 
army, it would be found that in their religious 
orientation they have not shifted, in any great 
number, from their positions before entering the 
service. They are more stubborn and more 
frank in their opinions — that is all. Those who 
were rehgious are now more positive. Those 
who were indifferent to religion are now more 
difficult to interest in its claims. 

Moreover, some critics go to the extreme of 
insisting that because the soldiers consider 
courage and unselfishness the supreme virtues, 
they are therefore antagonized by any presenta- 
tion of the importance of moral integrity and 
spiritual fitness. Such a report is not only an 
obvious contradiction (for do not unselfishness 
and courage underlie all other manifestations of 
virtuous character?) ; it is also an aspersion 
upon the common sense and manhood of the 
army. 



104 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FBANCB 

The Y. M. C. A. made no effort to force re- 
ligious views upon the men; but, with the ap- 
proval of General Pershing, it endeavoured to 
help the morale by its appeal to their spiritual 
natures and their moral principles. All relig- 
ious workers were especially warned against a 
" holier-than-thou " attitude ; and they were 
emphatically impressed with the social responsi- 
bihty of the Christian Association for the lives 
and general welfare of the soldiers. The ideal 
is symbolized in the Red Triangle — Body, 
Mind, and Spirit. 

While I was directing the activities, I was 
privileged to have for three days Bishop 
Hughes, of Boston, addressing different units of 
our division. The enthusiastic reception he was 
always accorded would have reassured any one 
who imagined that the American soldier had no 
time for a vigorous, manly Christian mes- 
sage. 

The men attended religious services only of 
their own volition. I believe the only occasions 
when they were brought to meetings of this sort 
in entire units were when they had the oppor- 
tunity of listening to Homer A. Rodeheaver, 
the famous song-leader who, with his songs and 



SOUVENIES SPIEITUAL 105 

smiles and stories and his trombone, com- 
pletely won their hearts. 

One of Rodeheaver's favourite stories con- 
cerns two darkies who were in a shell hole to- 
gether, while the shrapnel was flying thick and 
fast. Finally one of those big screechers landed 
too near for comfort. One of them called out, 
" George, don't you think it's 'bout time you-all 
j'ined the church? '* 

" Go 'way man," was the quick retort, " I 
done jine when that first one come over." 

It was not fear, however, that impelled those 
soldiers who sought out the religious services. 
Nor was it a trifling spirit of curiosity. They 
had thought things out and concluded that they 
needed what Christianity had to ofiFer. I was 
closely associated with the members of the Sani- 
tary Train — ambulance drivers, stretcher bear- 
ers, and doctors — in their work at the front. 
The first Sunday after we had retired from the 
lines, I was scheduled to speak to them at a 
religious meeting. Now, that crowd would have 
been horrified at the accusation of piety ! Yet, 
although there was no compulsion — ^just an an- 
nouncement by one of the officers, every man 
turned out. 



106 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

A fellow-secretary on that Sunday asked that 
any of his battalion who felt the need of Chris- 
tian prayer in their lives should tell him so; and 
every member of the battalion professed this 
desire. 

The most precious memories of my associa- 
tion with the American soldiers are connected 
with our religious meetings and discussions. I 
shall always consider that I became actually at 
home with them during our first Sunday service 
in the hut at Prauthoy. 

Notices of the meeting had been posted on 
the bulletin boards and in the town. On Sun- 
day morning the boys came in expectantly for 
their first church service since leaving America. 
There were Jews and Catholics and Protestants ; 
some were well educated, and others far from it. 
But they came so evidently with singleness of 
purpose and intent upon worship and medita- 
tion, that one could not have made the mistake 
of attempting to entertain them or offer them a 
brand of camouflaged religion. 

I had by this time formed a conclusion con- 
cerning the American soldier which I never had 
reason to modify. I found him above all things 
straightforward. If he chooses to misbehave 



SOUVENIES SPIEITUAL 107 

and go to the devil, he is not at all surreptitious 
about it. Nor is he loud and boastful about it, 
like so many callow youths at home who exult 
in the sowing of their wild oats. He is bad, 
when he wants to be, in an open, matter-of-fact 
manner, and offers no apologies. 

On the other hand, I discovered during this 
service, when he is attracted by good and lofty 
ideals, he is likewise unashamed; and when 
touched and deeply affected, quite ready to 
acknowledge it in a manly, straightforward 
spirit. 

At this first service our thoughts turned nat- 
urally to the loved ones at home. And when- 
ever they were mentioned in sermon or prayer, 
some of the boys who had never been far away 
from home before made no effort to conceal 
their emotions. Just the day before, when some 
one with a special fondness for " O Promise 
Me " had played that record several times on 
the phonograph, a Httle homesick Southerner 
had jumped up and yelled : " Say, Eddie, cut it 
out. I can't stand that any more." And this 
morning he sat with tight pressed lips and star- 
ing eyes whenever we spoke of the hopes which 
fathers and mothers and sweethearts reposed 



108 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FRANCE 

in their soldiers ; or when a sacred solo, one of 
the favourites at home, floated out from the 
Victrola on the platform. 

After the service they gathered about the 
piano for an informal sing. The old hymns and 
the new ones were called for one after another. 
Over in a shadowed corner I had found a seat 
next to this little homesick fellow. The tears 
glistened in his eyes and welled over onto his 
cheeks, yet he sang with the rest. I put my 
arm around his shoulders. He leaned against 
me with a grateful sigh. Then smiling bravely 
he pulled himself together, edged over nearer 
the piano, and joined lustily with the others : 

" I'm pressing on the upward way. 
New heights I'm gaining ev'ry day; 
Still praying as I onward bound, 
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground. 

" Lord, lift me up and let me stand 
By faith, on heaven's table land ; 
A higher plane than I have found, 
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground." 

Over on the Alsatian front, I went one Sun- 
day morning to speak in one of the numerous 
French towns between Belfort and the front 
line, in which the various units of the Twenty- 



SOUVENIES SPIEITUAL 109 

ninth Division were quartered. We conducted 
the service from the stone steps of an old-time 
dwelhng, in which several of our soldiers were 
billeted. We had been fortunate in securing a 
piano in this unlikely place; and the French in- 
habitants gathered and listened in amazement 
as the fresh young American voices woke the 
echoes of the public square. 

The secretary who was in charge there made 
the mistake of attempting to curtain the real 
purpose of the meeting behind a lot of intro- 
ductory pleasantries. The men were manifestly 
restless ; and finally one of them, to the accom- 
paniment of murmured approval, called: "Aw, 
cut out that bunk and get down to business ! '* 

So we did. 

And as always, the soldiers meant business. 
They had come there to worship, and they had 
no timidity; nor had they any excuses to offer 
for being Christian soldiers. In truth, their 
favourite hymn, for which they called under all 
circumstances, was " Onward Christian Sol- 
diers"; and even those who did not care for 
religious services and who were careless in their 
lives were always ready to join in its swinging 
measures. 



110 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCB 

They were interrupted by an air battle, which 
took place, to the accompaniment of bursting 
shells, right above our heads. And yet it was 
not a distraction. We had been thinking of our 
part in the great crusade which, under the guid- 
ance of God, was to free the world for the fuller 
realization of His Hfe among men and nations. 
And shading our eyes, up there in the blue we 
could see one of our comrades of the air risking 
his life, fighting single-handed, and winning for 
the very cause of which we spoke. And how 
we cheered then; and after this object lesson 
turned back refreshed to our service. After 
that it was easy and natural to conclude the 
address with a few simple, thoughtful words — 
simply and thoughtfully received — ^about the 
necessity for keeping ourselves clean in life and 
mind and soul, in order to be true knights, 
worthy of this great and righteous crusade with 
which those back home had entrusted us. This 
led us to Christ, our perfect Companion and 
Leader, our Source of strength. Then we 
closed with a hymn. Heads up, eyes level, they 
sang; and even the uncomprehending French 
bystanders seemed to catch something of the 
significance of their attitude : 



SOUVENIES SPIEITUAL 111 

" Stand up, stand up for Jesus, 

Stand in His strength alone ; 
The arm of flesh will fail you. 

Ye dare not trust your own : 
Put on the gospel armour. 

Each piece put on with prayer; 
Where duty calls, or danger, 

Be never wanting there." 

One Sunday afternoon towards evening, I had 
taken a load of canteen supplies to another sec- 
retary, whose regiment was stationed up where 
the shells were falling. At his invitation I 
stopped to hold a short service before starting 
with my Ford camionette on the return route. 
This would mean night driving without lights ; 
but with several soldiers joining in the request 
one could not refuse. 

The secretary was living in a small room of 
a rickety old building, so we decided to hold the 
meeting out-of-doors. The word was passed 
from group to group. It was not long before 
we had quite a gathering, sitting in a semicircle 
beneath the trees in a near-by orchard. There, 
fairly well screened from observation from 
above, we met in a short, informal moment of 
prayer and thought. 

All I did was to offer a little encouragement 



112 WITH THE Y. M. 0. A. IN FRANCE 

in a few quiet words about God, our Father. 
Then the others, without urging and with no 
appearance of self-consciousness, gave utterance 
to their thoughts. They were not self-con- 
scious, because they were God-conscious. I had 
never before heard a group of men speak so 
naturally and assuredly — at the same time rev- 
erently — of the Almighty, as did those Christian 
young men who had drawn aside for their brief 
companionship of worship at a time when they 
realized that Hfe might be cut short at any 
minute. These boys were upright in their lives. 
They were downright in their convictions and 
knowledge of the heart. They were outright in 
the expressions of speech and prayer. 

We were praying together when a shell burst 
in a near-by field, between us and the sun, which 
was dipping low. We raised our heads, and I 
think we were all caught by the strange beauty, 
as the glow from the west shone through the 
rising cloud of dust and smoke. It was a picture 
of just what we had been experiencing for the 
last few minutes within our own breasts — the 
glory and comfort of the Eternal shining warmly 
through the ugliness of man's short battles. 

Then without accompaniment we sang, 



SOUVENIES SPIEITUAL 113 

"Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling 
gloom." 

Having moved away from the comparative 
quiet of the Alsatian front up to the stiff fighting 
on the eastern bank of the Meuse above Verdun, 
we learned one day that part of our division was 
to go over the top the next morning for the first 
time in the big drive. In our barracks there 
v^ere fourteen " Y " secretaries spending the 
night. We had all gone to bed, but before we 
blew out the lights we held a little prayer meet- 
ing of our own, each man offering his petition 
for the lives and souls of our fighting men whom 
we had come to love so well. I shall never for- 
get the unwonted quiet that followed. As a 
rule, we were a boisterous lot of bed-fellows; 
but this night we swiftly put out the candles and 
lay there in the dark, each of us concerned with 
his own thoughts. 

After rising at three o'clock the next morning 
for an early start, to reach the front by day- 
light, I had reason to recall those prayers, as I 
saw our brave fellows going forward to the at- 
tack. Their first objective was a hill which the 
French declared could not under the most 
favourable conditions be stormed in less than 



114 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

ten hours. They swarmed over it in exactly 
seventeen minutes. 

Some of these boys I had met with just the 
morning before. Starting early with my faith- 
ful Ford and taking along a load of goods, I 
kept an appointment with another secretary, 
speaking to his men at an eleven o'clock service. 
His outfit was quartered in Verdun, up by the 
massive citadel. The next day they would be in 
the fight. 

I felt, and tried to express, the significance of 
our morning gathering there in the stronghold 
that had been made famous in all the world and 
for all time, by the heroic defense of our French 
comrades. With the great test so near, every 
one was serious that day; but there was a par- 
ticularly solemn hush in that room as we 
thought together of their friends already on the 
firing line, of the stern work cut out for them 
for the morrow. The boys knew that some of 
them would not come together again in such a 
meeting in this world; and I knew that I was 
speaking to some of them for the last time. 
The unspoken need which all of us felt prompted 
some one to call for his favourite hymn : " I 
Need Thee Every Hour." 



SOUVEKIES SPIEITUAL 115 

Then there came a few words about the kind 
of soldier the Master desires. A few words 
about the courage of the Christian, fighting 
Christ's battles in the world and in his own 
heart. Then together we pledged ourselves — 
come what might for the remainder of our 
lives — to loyalty to the great Captain of clean 
and triumphant manhood. 

Other meetings were even less formal. Some 
were quite unexpected. One day, as I was sell- 
ing from the back of my car, which was drawn 
up by the roadside, to a group of tired soldiers 
whom I had chanced to meet, I saw a familiar 
face approaching through the crowd. Then 
my friend, drawing near, demanded : " Say, 
Warren, how about this verse in the New Testa- 
ment, 'Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I 
will build my church.* What does that mean? 
My Buddy is a Catholic, and I can't quite ' get ' 
the way he reads it." 

Another nodded and said, "That verse al- 
ways puzzled me, too." 

As others were listening — some from curios- 
ity, some from real interest — I pulled out my 
pocket Testament and read the words in their 
full setting. Describing quickly the circum- 



116 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

stances in the relation between Jesus and His 
disciples at the time they were spoken, I stated 
my own interpretation. And then I took oc- 
casion to add a few words about the deity of 
Christ, and His appeal to the common sense 
and the manly instincts of the soldier. 

After that the selling was different. 

Out there on the road under the clearest of 
skies, we felt His presence. It seemed some- 
how that Christ Himself was there, unfolding 
to us, as no words could, the meaning of the 
Scripture. 

As the men lingered about the car, I was 
loath to leave. It seemed to me that we might 
have been standing on the road to Emmaus. 

During one of the fiercest bombardments 
north of Verdun, about sixty men had taken 
refuge one evening in a shallow dugout which 
was really no security at all. The air was 
stifling, and they were crammed in so tightly 
that under any circumstances the strain on their 
nerves would have been seemingly unbearable. 
But they had the added anxiety of knowing that 
a single well directed shell could demolish their 
flimsy shelter. 

Thoughtlessly somebody swore. At once 



SOUVENIES SPIRITUAL 117 

through the darkness arose a storm of protest : 
*' Cut out that cussin' and get to prayin' — you ! " 
After a silence, while the ground was rocked 
by high explosives, some one began to hum. 
And then others softly caught up the words : 

" Be not dismayed whatever betide, 
God will take care of you ; 
Beneath His wings of love abide, 
God will take care of you. 

" God will take care of you, 

Thro' every day, 

O'er all the way ; 
He will take care of you, 
God will take care of you." 

Into our advanced dressing station one day 
there limped a young fellow with a machine- 
gun wound through his knee. Refusing the aid 
of litter bearers, he had hobbled three miles 
through the forest in the direction of our sta- 
tion. And there he stoically stood while his leg 
was dressed and the anti-tetanus serum was in- 
jected. I offered him a tempting bit of choco- 
late. He shook his head and said, " Give it to 
some one that's hurt bad." I had almost to 
force him to take it. Directed to a waiting am- 



118 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

bulance, he declined the trip to the hospital. 
He insisted upon returning to his duty. 

** I'm not done for yet," he said. " I came 
over here to soldier, and damned if I don't 
soldier. If the good Lord will only let me get 
that ammunition train through, that's all I 
ask of Him." 

And so there was a great deal of praying at 
the front. It might not have passed as such 
back home in some church circles. But it rang 
true out there — rough and ready prayers of 
rugged men who found themselves up against 
it. Those who had so lately profaned Christ's 
name in thoughtless moments of soldier life, 
now pronounced it with a new accent. 

"For Christ's sake, give me a cigarette!" 
The chaplain and I, standing near, started at 
these words which rang through the dugout one 
evening. They might have sounded like blas- 
phemy ; in reality they were a prayer. The man 
who uttered them, little more than a boy, had 
been shot deep in the back and was lying on 
his stomach on a stretcher. Having anticipated 
his call, I was just then lighting and puffing on a 
cigarette, which I presently placed between the 
lips of the tortured soldier. Then we heard 



SOUYENIES SPIEITUAL 119 

his sigh of relief and — '* Thanks. I'm better 
now." 

" Mr. Secretary," said the chaplain, " I be- 
lieve you helped to answer a real prayer then. 
For surely the One who declared, * Inasmuch as 
ye do it unto one of the least of these . . .' 
must recognize in the simplest entreaty which 
a suffering soldier of Liberty offers in His name 
a genuine prayer." 

The chaplain, a few minutes before, had 
helped to bring this boy and another on stretch- 
ers to the dugout. He had gone out himself 
alone into No Man's Land and rescued them 
from their perilous position where they had 
been lying wounded since early in the day. Now 
he stood there, his uniform muddy and torn, 
leaning wearily against the wall. His eyes 
were heavy for sleep, yet he was watching every 
motion as the skillful fingers of the surgeon 
cleaned and dressed the wounds. He inquired 
about the boys' chances for recovery. Reas- 
sured on this point, he addressed himself po- 
litely to the doctor. Always the faultless 
Southern gentleman, even the heavy pounding 
of the guns and the shock of war's grim scenes 
could not joggle him from his accustomed 



-120 WITH THE Y. M. 0. A. IN FRANCE 

^courtesy. He saluted and in his careful drawl 
announced: 

" And now, Captain, if you will excuse me, I 
think I will go back and try to find some more." 

We shaded our candles, as he opened the 
door and stepped out into the dark. There was 
a low whistle from one of the ambulance men. 
"Say," he exclaimed, "some man, that! I've 
always said that fellow was a prince. Now I'll 
tell the world he's a gentleman.'* 

" Yes," observed another, " the Cha,plain's a 
man all right. The kind of Christian, too, that 
makes a fellow think." 

Two nights later the chaplain came again 
into the dressing station. This time he was 
carried on a stretcher. Once more he had gone 
out on his perilous errand of mercy to rescue 
one of his boys. When he failed to return, 
others, who loved him for his quiet manliness, 
had gone to search for him. And now he lay 
there in a pool of blood. His leg was gone; his 
frame was shattered; his life was a matter of 
minutes, and he knew it. But his courage was 
strong; his faith was unshaken; and he was 
smiling, this Christian gentleman who was not 
afraid to die. He thanked every one partic- 



SOUVENIES SPIEITUAL 121 

ularly for the efforts to ease his pain. He 
seemed to be waving a cheery farewell, as he 
peered around through the flickering candle 
light at the anxious faces and called several of 
the boys by name. 

Then reaching for the doctor's hand he said : 
"And now, Captain, I must be leaving you. 
Good-bye. God's will be done.'* 

And so the knightly spirit carried on. 

Somewhere in the South there are aching 
hearts, I know; but blessed with a sacred love. 
And many a thoughtful American lad is missing 
this man of the regiment; yet still living and 
growing in manhood under his influence. And 
I carry always this souvenir — the memory of 
God's Gentleman. 

The best of these meetings at the front were 
not largely attended. They were the times 
when two or three were met together. The 
talks were personal. It was easier to find God 
because in our heart-to-heart way we reached 
out and found each other. 

While I was working one night in the first- 
aid station which had been set up in a dugout 
forming part of the front line of our sector, out 
from the rain of shrapnel and high explosives a 



122 WITH THE Y. M. 0. A. IN FEANCE 

stalwart soldier brought his pal. The lad was 
young and slender, and shaken with shell shock. 
After a few words of encouragement, the big 
fellow turned to go back to his post of duty. 
But the other threw his arms around his neck. 
His voice broke in a great sob as he cried, 
" Oh, Bob, for God's sake don't leave me. I 
can't stand the noise." 

After a while he was quieted. Then he sat 
over in a corner, morose, morbidly thinking of 
the horrors outside, quivering from head to 
feet. I slipped to the bench beside him and 
talked to him. Presently, almost w^ithout his 
suspecting it, I had him munching on some 
chocolates and biscuits. Then when he saw 
that he was not so badly oflF as he had imagined, 
and found that he was talking to a Y. M. C. A. 
man, his confidence was won. While others 
were busy with the wounded, we had a friendly 
talk off there in a corner of the dugout, where 
a candle was sputtering on the table. 

At last he burst out : " Say, if religion means 
taking care of a fellow like this, I*m strong for 
it!" 

We talked a little more. He knew his need. 
It was only necessary to guide him to the One 



SOUVENIRS SPIRITUAL 123 

who is the satisfaction for all our needs, the 
strength for all our weaknesses. There in the 
corner, just before the candle burned itself 
out, the boy accepted Christ as his own. As 
we quietly shook hands on it, he smiled 
and said, " Say, but won't my mother be 
glad ! " 

" Mother " was a magic word out there. 
Many a time I have heard an ambulance driver 
or stretcher bearer telling of a narrow escape 
of some friend of his during the shelling, where- 
upon another would observe, " Well, that fel- 
low's mother's prayers were following him all 
right- 
Many a soldier has been saved from his lower 
self by thoughts of mother and sweetheart. 
One of the most impressive and thrilling experi- 
ences of my life came to me one night during 
my conversation with five young men, of whom 
this proved true. 

We were located on a hill overlooking a little 
manufacturing town of eastern France. Out 
under the window of the abandoned, tumble- 
down house, in which I had set up my canteen 
and my cot, mechanics had been working all 
day on the engine of a big Cadillac touring car. 



124 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

As dusk drew on, I became an interested by- 
stander. With the coming of darkness the 
group of workers dispersed; but one of them 
Hngered, and we talked together. We talked of 
many things. We compared our impressions 
of the war, of France, of the French soldiers, of 
the French peasants. We spoke of the morals, 
or lack of morals, of the French inhabitants of 
that little manufacturing town, to whom licen- 
tiousness appeared a virtue. 

And this led him to confide that, since the 
opportunity was so constantly offered to him, 
he had decided to have his little fling, and to 
start in that very night. I asked him about his 
family at home. He admitted that he was mar- 
ried, but averred that he was glad to be free to 
amuse himself for a while. 

Then I brought from my pocket a picture of 
my own wife, spoke of our courtship, our love 
for each other, and remarked that we expected, 
before I could get back to the States, a Httle 
baby in the family. 

" Now," I asked him, as he began to under- 
stand where I was leading, " supposing I, after 
looking at this picture and thinking these 
thoughts, should thrust the picture into my 



SOUVENIES SPIEITUAL 126 

pocket and the thoughts into the back of my 
head, and go down-town and do as you have 
been talking of doing. What would I be, in 
your estimation?" 

Unhesitatingly, he replied, " Why, a mucker." 

Of course I did not need to drive the point 
home. He did not go down-town that night. 
He went to his billet and to bed; but not until 
we had had a quiet talk together about Christ, 
" the purest among the mighty, and the might- 
iest among the pure," and the soldier had sur- 
rendered his heart. 

I had not had time to go to my own room 
after this interview, before another acquaint- 
ance sauntered by. We drifted together and 
began to chat. To my astonishment, the con- 
versation followed almost exactly the lines of 
the previous one; to such an extent that it im- 
pressed me as most uncanny. I knew what he 
would say in every instance before he said it; 
for his ideas, his weak desires, his way of ex- 
pressing them, were the same as those which 
the other boy had held. 

And I followed the same line of reasoning. 
I brought out the same photograph, I used al- 
most th^ sg^me words. I appealed to him in the 



126 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

name of his sweetheart and spoke of the father 
and mother back home who had put their trust 
in him. And I gave him a Httle card bearing 
a verse about Mother, which had been a great 
help to me. Again the thought turned to 
Christ, our example, our comrade, our strength; 
and again a boyish heart yielded. 

When the third man came up to me, and the 
conversation took precisely the same course, I 
began to understand that it was not chance that 
had brought them there; nor any mechanical 
trick of the memory that induced me to speak 
to each one in the same manner and with the 
same result. 

And I knew finally, when in that one evening 
I had spoken with five young men — three on 
their way down to the village and two as they 
were returning from their revels — that God in 
a mysterious and most amazing way was using 
me as His spokesman. It impressed me as the 
highest privilege and honour I could ever hope 
to have. And to-day I am awed and filled with 
wonder and gratitude, when I recall that even- 
ing's continuous, one-by-one conference of 
prayer and council. 

The memory of that occasion early in my ex- 



SOUVENIES SPIEITUAL 127 

perience in France always carries with it a re- 
currence of a thrill which was mine just before 
leaving for home. On the road one day towards 
the close of my work over there, I met one of 
these five men, whom I had not seen for some 
time. He smiled as he held out his hand. 

"Well," said he, "you see I have come 
through the drive all right. The bullets didn't 
get me. And neither did the temptations you 
warned me against." Then bringing from the 
pocket of his blouse a dingy looking card, he 
added, " This helped to carry me through." It 
was the copy of the poem I had given him the 
night of our talk together. 

One could not better close his memories of 
the days in France than with this thought of the 
Mothers of America, who accompanied their 
sons in their great crusade over there. 

To My Son 

" Do you know that your soul is of my soul 

such part, 
That you seem to be fiber and core of my 

heart ? 
None other can pain me as you, son, can do ; 
None other can please me or praise me 

as you. 



128 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN PEANCE 

Remember the world will be quick with its 

blame, 
If shadow or stain ever darken your name. 
* Like mother, like son,' is a saying so true 
The world will judge largely of mother by 

you. 
Be this then your task, if task it shall be, 
To force this proud world to do homage to 

me. 
Be sure it will say when its verdict youVe 

won, 
She reaps as she sowed. This man is her 



IV 
Souvenirs Statistical 



IV 

SOUVENIRS STATISTICAL 

THE formidable and rapidly growing 
task which confronted the Young 
Men's Christian Association in the 
great World War and the undaunted spirit with 
which it was accepted and performed will stand 
forth always as an inspiring memory among my 
personal souvenirs. One should consider him- 
self highly privileged to have had even a small 
part in this service, whose proportions and im- 
portance will become more and more recognized 
with the passing of time. 

A fair idea of the size of the organization is 
obtained from comparison in this respect with 
other excellent relief organizations. The Salva- 
tion Army operated regularly at forty points; 
the Y. W. C. A. at forty-eight points; the 
Knights of Columbus at sixty points. The 
American Y. M. C. A. operated regularly at 
3,356 points: at 1,507 with the American Ex- 
peditionary Forces; at 1,849 with allied forces 
and prisoners. 

131 



132 WITH THE Y. M. 0. A. IN FRANCE 

The amazing and greatly appreciated services 
rendered the soldiers of other countries — the 
French, Italians, Czecho-Slovaks, Russians, 
Chinese; the armies in Palestine, Mesopotamia, 
Gallipoli, Macedonia, India, Africa — has led in 
every case the highest officials of those coun- 
tries to urge the indefinite expansion of the Red 
Triangle work after the wslt. 

The American Y. M. C. A. overseas workers 
were distributed as follows: 

505 in Great Britain. 

6,812 " France. 

273 " Italy. 

55 " Russia. 

^2 " Siberia. 

I ** Greece. 

3 " Denmark (prisoners-of-war). 
8 " Switzerland. 

I " Germany with prisoners (had neutral 
assistants). 

6 " Gibraltar. 

3 " Palestine. 
10 " India. 

90 " Mesopotamia. 

4 " Egypt. 

7 " East Africa. 

(There were also 4,763 "Y" workers in canton- 
ments and camps in America, and neutral workers 
among prisoners.) 



SOUVENIRS STATISTICAL 133 

Our interest is naturally centred upon the 
" Y " work with the American Expeditionary 
Force in France. It is here especially that 
the achievements of the Association merit the 
gratitude of the American people. 

In France the Y. M. C. A. forgot itself into 
immortality. It thought only of the army. 
Amid tremendous handicaps, it sacrificed itself 
in the straining to meet an infinite human need; 
and out of that sacrifice it is rising to-day into a 
new and abundant life. 

The standards of the Red Triangle were put 
into action within the army and were kept there 
from start to finish. 



Y men and women were found 
On troop trains, 
Upon transports. 
Near the docks. 
Guiding city sightseers, 



Managing hotels and clubs. 
Entertaining audiences. 
Nerving against weakness. 
Sending money home. 



134 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

Conducting canteens, 
Hiking with infantry, 
Riding on freight cars, 
Instructing illiterates, 
Sewing soldiers' clothes. 
Teaching French classes. 
Instituting college courses. 
Assisting chaplains, 
Nurturing character. 

Arranging athletics. 

Sharing soldier food. 

Sleeping in mud, 

Offering refreshment. 

Carrying wounded. 

Imparting cheer, 

Ardently rallying. 

Tenderly ministering. 

In first aid stations. 

Over the top, 

'Neath the poppies of France. 

The Personnel of the organization was, of 
course, a main dependence in this great work. 
The demand for men and more men grew with 
the army. The demand far outstripped the 
supply. 

Young men within the draft ages could not 
be accepted, unless they were very obviously 
physically disqualified for army service. The 



SOUVEKIES STATISTICAL 136 

great number therefore had to come from the 
ranks of older men. 

The several state committees which can- 
vassed the country for men considered at least 
150,000 possibihties. About 40,000 of these 
were selected for consideration by the Head- 
quarters Committee at New York. Finally, 11,- 
229 were accepted and sent overseas. Decem- 
ber 15, 1918, there were 6,048 men and 1,395 
women in " Y " uniforms overseas. After the 
signing of the armistice, the Association under- 
took to send across women workers at the rate 
of 100 a week, for duty in the leave areas and 
French and English ports. 

According to Mr. Geo. W. Perkins : " In any 
form of organization in civilian life, whether it 
be in public schools, chain stores, or corpora- 
tions, if ninety per cent of those originally em- 
ployed make good the results are regarded as 
highly satisfactory. If ten per cent of the 11,229 
people operating in France for the Y. M. C. A. 
were inefl[icient, it would mean that there were 
1,122 men and women who were more or less 
of a failure. I do not believe that anything 
like this number of people were unsuccessful." 
Thus it is estimated that the Y. M. C. A. work- 



136 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

ers in France were more than ninety per cent 
efficient. In view of the constant and trying 
emergencies faced by these inexperienced secre- 
taries, this is decidedly a winning record. 

Of these men and women operating for the 
" Y " sixty-one gave their lives in France. 
Eighteen of them were killed in action or died 
from wounds; the rest from accidents, exposure, 
and overwork. One hundred and twenty-six 
were wounded. One hundred and fifty-two 
were cited in official orders, and sixty-three 
decorated for bravery. In the Argonne drive 
over 700 workers, fifty of them women, with 140 
" Y " trucks were attached to the fighting units; 
in the Chateau-Thierry and St. Mihiel drives 
there were over 2,000 " Y" secretaries. During 
the drives of the spring and summer of 1918 the 
Y. M. C. A. gave away to the fighters more than 
a million dollars' worth of supplies. The Red 
Triangle trucks were used as ambulances, and 
the secretaries put to good account their 
stretcher bearer drill. 

The Association provided for free canteen 
supplies to troops in combat or on long marches 
and to wounded. The value of its gifts in 1918 
was $1,400,000, 



SOUVElSriES STATISTICAL 137 

Free" service was given to thousands of men 
in the Argonne Forest. Fifty thousand copies of 
the Paris editions of the Nezv York Herald and 
London Daily Mail w^ere distributed each day; 
4,000 sent to the front lines by aeroplanes. The 
Y. M. C. A. attempted to get supplies to the 
famous Lost BattaHon by aeroplane. Ralph A. 
Amermanof Scranton, Pennsylvania, has a letter 
of acknowledgment from the Commander of the 
Aero Squadron, to whom they were delivered 
for carrying. Harry W. Blair of Carthage, Mis- 
souri, and S. B. Burrows of Brooklyn, were 
within 1,000 yards of this battalion during the 
six days they were surrounded. A letter from 
Lieutenant-Colonel Whittlesey to Mr. Burrows 
describes the " Y " service: 

" S. B. Burrows, Esq., 
8 1 1 Beverly Road, 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 
My Dear Mr, Burrows: 

You have called my attention to the fact that 
the statement has been made that, on the relief of the 
'Lost Battalion,* money was charged by the Y. M. 
C. A. for chocolate and cocoa supplied to the men. 
Of course you and I know that this is not a fact, and 
I take great pleasure in stating that on that occasion 
the first hot food which the men received was the 
cocoa supplied by the Y. M. C. A, 



138 WITH THE Y. M. 0. A. IN FEAKCE 

The assistance of the Y. M. C. A. at that time was 
tremendously appreciated by the men and by the of- 
ficers, and was given in a fine and Hberal spirit with- 
out any suggestion of reimbursement. Furthermore, 
the Y. M. C. A. was the only organization present at 
that time. I should like to add that the work of the 
Y. M. C. A. in our regiment was of the very greatest 
help, and was thoroughly and gratefully appreciated. 

Sincerely, 

Charles W. Whittlesey." 

The following statement was made by Major 
J. W. Woolridge, 38th Infantry, at the Letter- 
man Hospital, San Francisco : 

" I have seen Y. M. C. A. canteen workers 
crawl on their bellies under the most devilish fire the 
Germans ever sent over. I have seen them die. I 
have watched these men mingle with the boys in the 
front line distributing chocolate, cigarettes and to- 
bacco. Never have I seen a Y. M. C. A. man charge 
any man, holding a front line, a nickel." 

In closing a stirring public address in Wash- 
ington at the time of the presentation of Croix 
de Guerre to three secretaries from overseas, 
Secretary of War Baker paid this splendid trib- 
ute to " Y " secretaries : 

" So, in a certain way, the Y. M. C A. Has repre- 
sented the heart of America and has carried to the 



SOUVEKIES STATISTICAL 139 

soldiers abroad our affections and our ideals for them. 
. . . When we survey this superb army which 
is now coming home, with its broadened shoulders, 
bronzed cheeks, robust health, splendid nerve, and 
high spirit that comes with great accomplishment, 
we must remember that among the formative influ- 
ences that went into it and made it possible was this 
social spirit which was carried from home to the 
front line trenches, which shared the privations and 
dangers, was an integral part of the army — for in * No 
Man's Land,' where the shells fell thick and fast, 
there are the graves of the American soldiers and the 
graves of the ' Y ' worker, side by side, not separated 
in their work, not separated in their faith, not sepa- 
rated in spirit, not separated in their sacrifice ; finally 
united in their last resting place. . . ." 

The Post Exchange or Canteen Service was not 
a part of the original " Y " program. It was 
taken over at the request of General Pershing, 
to relieve the army of this branch of work at a 
critical time, when every available enlisted man 
was needed for active service. In accepting 
this difficult assignment the Y. M. C. A. was 
handicapped by not having a sufficient number 
of men trained and adapted to such work; but it 
did a great and patriotic service in assuming 
an unfamiliar and burdensome responsibility. 

The money for operating the Post Exchange 



140 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

was borrowed capital. This branch of the work 
was operated on a " turn over basis," the goods 
sold at wholesale cost plus freight and unavoid- 
able expenses. This was in conformity with 
General Pershing's Order No. 33. There was 
no question of conducting this huge canteen 
without charge. Had this been attempted the 
bill would have amounted to $300,000,000 or 
more. 

No charge was made for either rental or clerk 
hire, and prices were kept down despite trans- 
oceanic shipping. 

When the first supplies from America were 
received they were sold at the price prevailing 
at home prior to the war. This was somewhat 
above the charges of the Quartermaster's Sales 
Commissaries which were opened in a few 
points for limited hours. The Quartermaster's 
goods, purchased at the lowest possible price, 
were, by act of Congress, sold at actual cost, 
without including charges for ocean tonnage or 
transportation in France. On August 1, 1918, 
the prices of articles sold in Y. M. C. A. can- 
teens were therefore reduced to conform to 
Quartermaster's prices, though it meant an 
actual loss of five per cent to eight per cent be- 



SOUVENIES STATISTICAL 141 

tween the cost and selling price. Such prices 
have approximated sixty per cent to seventy- 
five per cent of the current retail price for the 
same article in America. Each hut was sup- 
plied v^ith a large poster giving a complete list 
of the prices at which goods were to be sold. 

Sample Prices of Articles Sold in Y. M. C. A, 
Canteens in France, October, 1918. 

Prevall- 
Correspond- ing Price 

Selling price ing value same article 
French Money U.S. Money in U. S. 
Chocolate, (100 grams) 3J^-ounce 

bar, made in France Frs. .75 $0.13^ $0.17^ 

Chocolate, Hershey's small bar.. .25 .04 J^ .07 

Dental Cream 75 .13^ .20 

Hot Cocoa, Coffee, or Tea, per cup .25 .045^ .10 

Gillette Razor Blades, per dozen. 3.00 .54 1.00 

Tan Shoe Polish, per tin 50 .09 .15 

Colgate's Shaving Stick 1.00 .18 .25 

Star Chewing Tobacco, per cut.. .45 .08 .10 

Cigarettes, Camels, 20's 50 .09 .15 

Cigarettes, Fatima, 20's 55 .10 .15 

Cigarettes, Sweet Caporals, 20's. .30 .05^ .10 
Cigars, El Roi Tan and similar 

grades 35 .06^ .12^ 

Smoking Tobacco, 3-ounce Prince 

Albert 60 .11 .15 

A Franc averages 18 cents in U. S. monev. 

A Centime is about one-fifth of a cent. 100 Centimes make a Franc. 

In this effort to give the soldiers the benefit 
of reduced prices, the " Y " has lost thousands 
of dollars in " excess of cost over selling price " 
—for example, $150,000 in September, 1918. 
The business handled by the Post Exchange 
system multiplied fivefold in eight months — 



142 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANOE 

from less than one million dollars in January, 

1918, to over five million dollars in September 
of that year. 

With the great congestion in transportation 
during the period of hostilities it was at times 
impossible to get anything like a sufficient sup- 
ply of goods to the distributing points. The 
army had agreed to allow the Y. M. C. A. 208 
tons of shipping space per month from the 
States to France for every unit of 25,000 men; 
yet when the demand was at its height the " Y " 
was unable at any time to secure more than 100 
tons per month for every 25,000 men. The army 
finally placed the allotment at 100 tons and it 
was several months before the exigencies of war 
demands permitted even this tonnage. 

In a public address at Le Mans, January 29, 

1919, General Pershing said regarding this lack 
of a proper tonnage of supplies : — 

" It was one of the faults of war conditions. We 
could not have supplied any more tonnage if we had 
been running the canteen ourselves." 

This disappointment in the apportionment of 
ocean tonnage seriously hampered the canteen 
work; but the organization, undaunted, turned 
at once to manufacturing a large part of its re- 



SOUVENIES STATISTICAL 143 

quirements in France. Through the coopera- 
tion of the French Government the Y. M. C. A. 
reopened a number of idle factories, furnished 
raw materials, supervised manufacture, and 
used the entire product. It entirely operated 
fifteen mills for eatables and took over the en- 
tire food product of twenty-six others; also 
running three other big manufacturing plants. 
These included thirteen chocolate factories and 
twenty biscuit factories. i 

The monthly output of these factories aver- 
aged 18,000,000 tablets, rolls, or bars of choco- 
late, 3,000,000 cartons of caramels, 10,600,000 
packages of biscuit and 2,000,000 tins of jams. 

Excepting in rare instances all the raw ma- 
terials for use in these factories were purchased 
in the neutral countries. France which had 
closed all chocolate and candy manufacturing in 
that country during the earlier part of the war 
permitted the purchase of 500 tons of cocoa 
beans and 500 tons of tin. Fruits, fruit pulp, 
chemicals, figs, and other material were pur- 
chased and transported to France by the Y. M. 
C. A. from England, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, 
Portugal, Sweden, and the tropics. Lard was 
obtained in Brazil. The sugar and flour was 



144 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FBANCB 

sent from the United States. Even the lumber 
and paper for use in the factories to prepare the 
goods for shipments were imported. 

At one time during a shortage of writing pa- 
per and envelopes, a contract for 100,000,000 
sheets of paper and envelopes was placed in the 
town of Tolosa, Spain, and most of the men, 
women, and children were exclusively engaged 
on this contract. 

On another occasion approximately a thou- 
sand tons of paper pulp, lampblack for the print- 
ing, and other necessities were shipped into 
France and the paper and envelopes manufac- 
tured in French factories opened for that pur- 
pose. 

Yet the Association was still embarrassed by 
a lack of transportation. The railroads in 
France were so congested that at times it was 
impossible to get supplies moved from place 
to place, and often difficult to get those shipped 
from America away from the coast or of¥ the 
docks. The military supplies for the Allied 
Armies always took precedence over everything 
else. To relieve this difficulty as far as pos- 
sible, and facilitate deliveries, the Y. M. C. A. 
secured in the United States and Europe auto- 



SOUVENIRS STATISTICAL 145 

mobiles and trucks. For the establishment 
of its motor transport system, it purchased 
up to January 1, 1919, 1,522 automobiles, 
auto trucks, and motorcycles at a cost of 
$2,234,117. 

It is estimated that fully eighty per cent of the 
transportation in France of the Y. M. C. A. sup- 
pHes was handled by its motor transport service. 
But here again there were frequent disappoint- 
ments. Two hundred motor cars lay on the 
docks in New York for many months awaiting 
transportation. Three large purchases of 
trucks, long needed by the Association, were 
made in England only to be commandeered by 
military necessity. And of course the constant 
shifting of army units made this motor trans- 
portation a critical problem for the " Y." 

Yet the railroads carried a vast amount of 
canteen supplies and equipment. They hauled 
more than 1,000 car-loads per month. During 
October, 1918, as an instance, the records show 
765 cars of general supplies, eighty-six cars of 
flour, 148 cars of sugar, 150 cars of tobacco, fifty- 
nine cars of chocolate, sixty-three cars of raw 
materials for manufacture, and 144 cars of lum- 
ber and hut materials. 



146 WITH THE Y. M. 0. A. IN FEANCE 

The shipments handled by the traffic depart- 
ment of the Y. M. C. A. in France, June, 1918, 
to January, 1919, inclusive, including equipment 
and suppHes, as well as merchandise sold in the 
canteens, were as follows : 











Valuation 


June.. 1918 593 cars trans. 


Fr. 


38,545,000 


July.. " 837 


« 


" 


« 


64,405,000 


August " 916 


« 


« 


(f 


59,540,000 


Sept.. " 954 


(( 


11 


it 


62,010,000 


Oct... " 1465 


« 


ft 


(( 


95,225,000 


Nov.. " 1219 


« 


tt 


« 


79,235,000 


Dec... " 1467 


« 


t* 


tt 


95,255,000 


Jan. 1919 1187 


« 


it 


It 


77,155,000 


8636 
Monthly 

average 1080 


561,370,000 ($101,046,000) 


a 


tt 


tt 


70,171,250 ($ 12,630,825) 



The business system of the Army Y. M. C. A. 
was supervised by The Price- Waterhouse Com- 
pany of New York, the largest accounting firm 
in America. A member of the firm was in Paris 
in immediate charge of all overseas accounts. 

Major-General James Harbord, Chief of Staff 
and later Chief of the Service of Supply, de- 
clared, in substance, to Mr. Elwood Brown, 
Senior Physical Director: 

" I was one of the committee of officers to whom 
the question of the canteen was first referred in Au- 
gust, 19 1 7, and I was the only man on the committee 
who voted against giving it to the Y. M. C. A. I 



SOUYEmES STATISTICAL 147 

did this, not because I was unfriendly or lacked con- 
fidence in the organization, but because I was its 
friend and did not want to see it undertake some- 
thing which would bring it into difficulties. After all 
that, however, I want to say that the Association has 
handled it far better than the Army itself or any 
other agency would have done." 

Some weeks after the armistice, when en- 
listed men had again become available for can- 
teen service, the Y. M. C. A. proposed turning 
the Post Exchange back to the army. General 
Pershing's letter in accepting the transfer from 
Mr. Carter, the managing head of the " Y " in 
France, follows : 

"As you correctly state, the Y. M. C. A. un3er- 
took the management of the post exchanges at my 
request at a time when it was of the greatest im- 
portance that no available soldier should be taken 
away from the vital military functions of training 
and fighting. As the reasons which impelled me at 
that time to request you to undertake this work no 
longer exist, I am glad to approve of your sug- 
gestion. In reaching this conclusion, consideration 
has been given to the new burdens that you have as- 
sumed. I have accordingly given directions that the 
army units themselves take over and operate their 
own post exchanges. 

" In making this change, permit me to thank you 
for the very valuable services and assistance which 



148 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

the Y. M. C. A. has rendered to the American Ex- 
peditionary Force in handling these exchanges. 
Handicapped by a shortage of tonnage and land 
transportation, the Y. M. C. A. has by extra exertion 
served the army better than could have been expected, 
and you may be assured that its aid has been a large 
factor in the final great accomplishment of the Amer- 
ican Army." 

The Educational System built up during the war 
by the Y. M. C. A. v^as greatly expanded when 
hostilities ceased. This was one of the "new 
burdens " referred to by General Pershing. 

The survey of the educational needs of the 
army was made by Anson Phelps Stokes, Jr., 
of Yale University. The system was headed 
by a Y. M. C. A. Army Educational Commission 
composed of John Erskine of Columbia, Chair- 
man; Frank E. Spaulding, Superintendent of 
Schools in Cleveland; and Kenyon L. Butter- 
field, President of Massachusetts Agricultural 
College. Schools were opened in camps, posts, 
and hospitals, based on their educational needs. 
An expenditure of $2,000,000 for text books 
alone was made, and 600 prominent educators 
were brought into the work. 

By order of General Pershing an American 
Army University was established at Beaune, to 



SOUYENIES STATISTICAL 149 

accommodate from 15,000 to 20,000 soldier stu- 
dents; and at the same time the main office of 
the Y. M. C. A. Army Educational Commission 
was moved from Paris to Beaune. Colonel Ira 
L. Reeves w^as appointed military commander 
at the school. Three months' courses in en- 
gineering, liberal and fine arts, and science were 
arranged for soldiers unable to attend European 
Universities. 

Mr. William Sloane, Chairman of the Na- 
tional War Work Council of the Association, an- 
nounced in the spring of 1919 that the entire 
educational system, valued at $4,000,000, had 
been presented to the army without cost. Both 
the Secretary of War and General Pershing in 
accepting the transfer took occasion heartily to 
commend the Y. M. C. A. for the extraordinary 
development of this important work. 

Athletics and Recreation were promoted to- 
gether with this educational program. With 
the beginning of its work in France the Y. M. 
C. A. brought from the United States several 
hundred expert athletic directors to organize 
athletic training and contests for the various 
military units. From July to November, 1918, 
$829,000 worth of athletic supplies were sent 



150 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

overseas. During the year 1918 and up to April 
1, 1919, the " Y " had provided over 2,250,000 
articles of athletic equipment. More than 100 
athletic fields were in use; hundreds of 
thousands of soldiers participated ; and the spec- 
tators in 1918 numbered 9,000,000. 

Recreation centres were established for the 
American soldiers, that they might have whole- 
some entertainment when on furlough. The 
French soldier was in his own land, the British 
only a day from home; but the American was 
in a strange land far from home. The Y. M. C. 
A. endeavoured to furnish the American home 
spirit in a foreign country; and the men on 
furlough could choose between mountain, 
country, and seashore resorts. Here the Asso- 
ciation sought to bring the soldiers under the 
influence of the finest type of American woman- 
hood, under the supervision of Mrs. Theodore 
Roosevelt, Jr. The officers and men who visited 
these leave areas can best tell America how 
well the " Y " succeeded. There were accom- 
modations for over 50,000 men at over thirty 
such centres in operation ; notably Aix-les-Bains, 
Nice, Cannes, Monte Carlo, and Chamonix. 
Here, in addition to all kinds of sports and en- 



SOUVENIES STATISTICAL 151 

tertainments, the men were taken on auto- 
mobile trips, river and lake excursions, walking 
trips for sightseeing. The " Y " operated a 
great many hotels throughout France and Eng- 
land, which were always crowded to capacity. 
There were two hotels for officers and three for 
enlisted men in Paris; and similar accommoda- 
tions at Bordeaux, Tours, Le Havre, Brest, St. 
Nazaire, Dijon, Nancy, Langres; and thirteen 
in and near Coblenz with the army of occupa- 
tion. 

Furnishing amusements to the soldiers in all 
parts of France was a gigantic task. Motion 
picture entertainments were furnished free to 
an extent that could be duplicated in America 
only at a box office income of millions of dol- 
lars. They involved the display of 4,000,000 
feet of film to a nightly audience of 300,000 
men. With combat divisions, portable ma- 
chines were sent on trucks from village to vil- 
lage. One hundred and fifty theatrical com- 
panies were recruited in the United States and 
sent overseas by the Y. M. C. A. to entertain 
the soldiers; and there were many lecturers and 
individual entertainers. Their variety and 
quality is suggested by such names as E. H. 



152 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCE 

Sothern, George Randolph Chester, Irvin Cobb, 
Winthrop Ames, Margaret Deland, Elsie Janis, 
Sir Arthur Priestly, Walter Damrosch, John 
Craig, William T. Elhs, Hughes Le Roux, 
Reginald Wright Kauffman, Vance Thompson, 
Miss Margaret Wilson. 

.The men were encouraged to develop their 
own amateur entertainments. Professional 
coaches were provided, hundreds of one-act 
plays and costumes without number were sup- 
plied. Under " Y " guidance the best of this 
amateur talent was enjoyed not only in 
their own organizations, but throughout all 
France. 

The Y. M, C, A, Huts thus linked the soldiers 
to their homes. Here writing paper was given 
away at the rate of 10,000,000 sheets a week, 
costing $39,000; and three-fourths of the letters 
to their homes were written by the soldiers on 
paper bearing the familiar Red Triangle. Here 
they were constantly reminded of their duty to 
keep in touch with their loved ones in America. 
Through the free service of the Y. M. C. A. 
they sent home 329,892 cash remittances, total- 
ling more than $20,104,080. This home spirit 
prevaUedj^ whether th^ " hut " were a regulation 



SOUVENIES STATISTICAL 153 

wooden structure, an abandoned! building, a 
dugout, a canvas tent, a thoroughly equipped 
city hotel, or a sixteenth century palace. 

Specially designed huts were erected in all 
suitable places. Type A, single hut, 144 feet by 
30 feet, with tables and benches, cost 60,000 
francs. Type B, double hut, 180 feet by 90 
feet, cost 90,000 francs. The smaller " Adrian 
Barracks " cost 20,000 francs. The French abri 
tent of double-lined canvas, put up when lumber 
was not accessible, cost from 3,000 to 7,000 
francs. Many of these regulation huts were 
manufactured at the Association factories in 
France. They were of the knock-down type, 
shipped in numbered sections and quickly as- 
sembled by an eager force of soldier helpers. 
The " Y *' had its own floating gang of Serbian 
labourers, who did much of the erecting and dis- 
mantling of huts. Well over 600 buildings were 
constructed by the Association; about the same 
number were leased; and over 800 centres were 
maintained in tents and army buildings. On 
May 1, 1919, there were 1,935 units of the 
Y. M. C. A. operating in France, with 2,770 
centres. 
The larger type hut required an equipment con- 



164 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANOE 

sisting of over 1,040 articles — including piano, 
phonograph, stoves, lights, decorations, chairs, 
brooms, basins, towels. Bibles, tobacco cutters, 
percolators, checkers, chess, knives, forks, 
spoons, blankets, blotters. They contained li- 
braries v^^hich totalled 5,000,000 bound volumes, 
4,000,000 pamphlets, 2,000,000 magazines and 
countless newspapers, and 1,000,000 song 
books. 

Religious Programs under the guidance of 
religious directors, all working under the super- 
vision of President Henry Churchill King, of 
Oberlin College, were carried out in these 
centres and through the army generally, to a 
degree which in every case was conditioned by 
the location and activities of the army units. 
Eminent religious workers of America were 
brought to France as special lecturers; notably 
Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, Bishop Charles 
Henry Brent, Rev. Alexander McGaffin, Rev. 
Maitland Alexander, Bishop Luther B. Wilson, 
Dr. Harry N. Dascomb. All of the regular sec- 
retaries who had had any training or experi- 
ence along these lines were directed to do their 
share in teaching and speaking. The attendance 
at Bible classes and religious services was en- 



SOUVENIBS STATISTICAL 156 

tirely voluntary, and they were totally free from 
sectarian bias. 

The Y. M. C. A. looked upon all of its great 
and varied task as applied religion — the re- 
ligion of comradeship, the religion of a friendly 
hand upon the shoulder. And there are no 
statistics available, no money values conceiv- 
able, for the thousands of quiet personal talks 
between soldiers in their homesickness, uncer- 
tainties, and distresses, and conscientious repre- 
sentatives of the Red Triangle. 

Every " Y " secretary sought to go among the 
soldiers, as the Master among the men of the 
East, " as one who serves." And all of them 
together constituted the most expansive, most 
practical, most virile example of applied 
brotherhood the world has ever seen. Thou- 
sands of men from every profession — only a 
small percentage formerly Y. M. C. A. secre- 
taries — toiling day and night to uphold in body, 
mind, and spirit (the Red Triangle) our fight- 
ing men, and thus stififen their morale. In 
chateau, hut, dugout, or front line trench; by 
magazines, tobacco, chocolate bars, songs, 
words of cheer the Association worked. Its 
program was so huge, so dynamic, so self-sac- 



156 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FRANCE 

rificing that to-day " the business of being a 
brother to men " means something new to the 
world. 

The operation of this practical Christian pro- 
gram has been sketched in a letter by Rev. 
Maitland Alexander, D. D., serving as the Y. M. 
C. A. Religious Work Director with the Amer- 
ican Army of Occupation, Coblenz, Germany. 
In writing of one evening's rounds of the Y's 
activities he says : " I have just come from 
Festival Hall. I went into the library of ten 
thousand volumes under the educational de- 
partment of the Y. M. C. A. and the room was 
full of doughboys reading quietly. I went into 
the restaurant where eight hundred doughboys 
were having free dinner at one time. I went 
into the social hall where there were four very 
tired-looking Y. M. C. A. girls dancing with 
about two hundred and fifty not tired soldiers. 
I went into the music hall where two thousand 
five hundred soldiers were looking at a show 
called the * Live Wires.* I saw the money ex- 
change and the home remittance counter 
crowded with those doing business. I went to 
the mothers' corner where fifteen or twenty 
boys were telling their troubles to the Festival 



SOUVENIES STATISTICAL 167 

Hall Mother, Mrs. Kency, whose popularity is 
so great that the boys cut their buttons off so as 
to ask her to sew them on and get a chance to 
talk. I went to the lounge where there were 
at least five hundred soldiers listening to a 
string orchestra and writing their home let- 
ters. 

"All the above under one roof, all free and all 
managed by the Y. M. C. A. Next Sunday 
night there will be twenty-five hundred men at 
church there, and a big Bible class Sunday 
morning. There are lots of things which ought 
not to happen, and for which the Y. M. C. A. is 
to blame, but the work for the army is wonder- 
ful when one thinks how hard it is to do for the 
army and how difHcult the army makes it. 

" I think some comparison of activities is in- 
teresting too. There are ten Salvation Army 
people doing a good work. There are about 
sixty Knights of Columbus here in the Third 
Army. There are four Jewish Welfare Work- 
ers in this army, and about thirty-five Red Cross 
women and ten men. If the Y. M. C. A. were 
removed there would not be much welfare 
work. We have over four hundred men and 
women working in this army. We have fifteen 



168 WITH THE Y. M. 0. A. IN FBANCE 

amusement units that give shows. We have 
about six movie outfits in each division. I have 
religious speakers making four addresses nearly 
every day, and have distributed a hundred thou- 
sand hymnals, ten thousand Testaments, five 
thousand single Gospels and tens of thousands 
of pieces of miscellaneous religious literature. 
This is some job." 

The effect of this service and fellowship upon 
the morale of the army is reflected in the testi- 
mony of those who have fought in other wars, 
in which there was no Red Triangle. General 
Pershing, Marshal Foch, General Petain, Ad- 
miral Sims are among those who have given 
rtfil^¥: M. C. A. the highest commendation. 
General Pershing has endorsed the sentiment 
of one of his colonels : " Give me 900 men and 
the * Y * rather than 1,000 men without the * Y.* " 
And he has declared: j 

" A sense of obligation for the varied and use- 
"Tirt service rendered to the army in France by 
the Young Men's Christian Association prompts 
me to join in the appeal for its further financial 
support. I have had opportunity to observe its 
operations, the quality of its personnel, and mark 
its beneficial influence upon our troops, and I 



SOUVENIRS STATISTICAL 159 

wish unreservedly to commend its work for the 

army." 

And from the soldier's view-point : 

"When your billet is a barnyard and your bed is 
crawling hay, 
When it's raining and you're out of luck and 

(likely) out of pay, 
When the only girl you want to see's a million miles 

away — 
What's the answer, Kid? 

The Answer is the old Y. M. C. A. ! 

" If it wasn't for the friendly Huts they run up over- 
night. 

Where a guy can find some smokes and make a 
place to read or write, 

Or maybe see a picture-show or watch a ten-round 

Why, Kid, we'd all go dippy before we end it right ! 

" But don't you lose no sleep about our funking any 
scrap ! 
For your wise old Uncle Sammy knows the way to 
..^ ^. treat a chap, 

%' When he's half-the-world from Homeland, is to dot 
■%"' the muddy map 

'J With snappy Red Triangles where the U. S. A/s 
4 on tap. 

"They treat you like you'd ought to be, they treat 
you like a man ; 



160 WITH THE Y. M. C. A. IN FEANCB 

They don't make no distinctions, and they don't put 
any ban 

On a guy who's never signed his name to no Salva- 
tion Plan — 

You're good enough for them if you're a good 
American. 

" But believe me, Kid, there's times — well, take my 
case the other day, 
When a whiz-bang kind of shook me up and made 

me wonder — say. 
When you have to talk to some one, and you don't 

know how to pray — 
What's the answer, Kid? 

The Answer is the old Y. M. C. A. ! " 

— Lee Wilson Dodd. 



Printed in the United States of America 



^ 



> 



liyiilllili I iiilM 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




007 691 439 4 



